"There Were Moments When We Were Sure It Was The End."
- 30.09.2026, 15:19
What are passengers on the Flydubai flight that sent out a distress signal due to a fight between the pilots saying?
On the morning of September 30, it was reported that a Flydubai plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv had sent a distress signal near the border between Saudi Arabia and Jordan, including a signal indicating that the aircraft had been hijacked. It later landed in the Saudi city of Tabuk. It has since emerged that a fight broke out between the pilots on board—the likely cause may have been one of them wanting to crash the plane. Passengers described what happened in the cabin, according to Ynet.
“We heard screams on the plane. Then the cockpit door opened, we saw a lot of blood, and someone had stabbed the pilot with a pocket knife. It felt like we were about to crash, so I screamed, ‘Hear me, Israel!’ There was a doctor and a nurse on board who administered first aid to the pilot. The Israelis, together with the crew on board, subdued the attacker, and we made an emergency landing. There were also moments when we thought we wouldn’t make it out of there alive,” — passenger Miriam told i24NEWS.
“There were moments when we were certain this was the end,” another passenger told N12. “We heard screams and shouts, and then we saw that the cockpit had been broken into, and there was blood there. We realized that a man on board had stabbed the pilot,”
According to passenger Noa, “Only the Israelis intervened”—they are the people in the bloodstained shirts in the photo.
“Throughout the entire incident, we prayed and said, ‘Hear us, Israel.’ The plane made an emergency landing, and it wasn’t until after we touched down that we truly understood what we had gone through,” said another passenger.
In Israel, this event is viewed as a terrorist act in every sense of the word, the TV channel notes.
Citing high-ranking officials from Israeli security agencies, it is reported that, according to preliminary data, the pilot from Oman attempted to crash the plane. Another pilot from the United Arab Emirates took control of the aircraft with the help of the crew and several Israeli passengers.
Earlier, it was speculated that the pilots might have been from Russia and Ukraine.