Flydubai Flight From Dubai to Tel Aviv Diverted to Saudi Arabia After Midair Emergency

A Flydubai passenger jet traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv was forced to divert to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after an emergency unfolded on the flight deck, triggering a dramatic midair sequence that Israel’s prime minister described as an attempted attack by one of the pilots.

Flight FZ1073 was cruising through Jordanian airspace when it issued a distress signal and changed course toward Tabuk, a city in northwestern Saudi Arabia. The incident prompted Israel to scramble warplanes, according to Reuters, underscoring the alarm the emergency triggered across the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one of the pilots stabbed the other and then attempted to crash the aircraft. In a statement, he also said Israel was bracing for other “potential threats” in the aftermath of the episode. No official authority has confirmed a hijacking attempt, and the precise cause of the incident remains under investigation.

The budget carrier Flydubai offered a more restrained account. The airline said an altercation occurred on the flight deck and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. It added that the plane was secured by on-duty crew members who were traveling onboard the flight.

At Tabuk’s Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport, where the aircraft touched down, officials said both the captain and the first officer had been hospitalized with injuries. The statement, carried by Saudi state-run Al Ekhbariya television, did not elaborate on the severity of their condition.

The United Arab Emirates has become a popular destination for Israeli tourists since the two countries normalized diplomatic ties in 2020, a US-brokered breakthrough that reshaped regional travel and commerce. The Dubai-Tel Aviv route is among the busiest links opened by that accord, making Wednesday’s emergency a matter of intense interest in both countries.

Video footage circulating from inside the cabin appeared to show the captain lying on the floor with several stab wounds, alongside a passenger suffering a bloody head injury. In another clip, passengers wept and cried out as the aircraft shook violently. The authenticity of the footage has not been independently verified by Al Jazeera.

Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of a passenger named Miriam, described the terror onboard to journalists at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport. She said her daughter believed she was going to die and that the plane began to lose control before other pilots on the flight took command of the aircraft.

Flight tracking data painted a stark picture of the emergency. The plane descended roughly 14,000 feet—about 4,300 meters—in less than 30 seconds, approximately two and a half hours after departing Dubai. Flightradar24 said on X that an initial general emergency signal, code 7700, was transmitted at about 05:31 GMT before being switched to code 7500, which declares “unlawful interference.”

Passenger Dalia Shpigel told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that travelers seated near the front of the cabin broke into the cockpit after the plane started to dive and they sensed something was gravely wrong. She recounted that about an hour before landing, passengers felt the aircraft was no longer under control and that it began to jump. “The guys saw that the plane had begun to dive and broke into the cockpit,” she said.

The timeline of the incident, according to available data, began at 03:05 GMT when the flight took off from Dubai. Altitude fluctuations started at 05:21 GMT, followed a minute later by the steep drop of more than 14,000 feet. The general emergency code was broadcast at 05:31 GMT, upgraded to the unlawful interference signal at 05:38 GMT, and the aircraft landed at Tabuk regional airport at 06:45 GMT.

Netanyahu said he later spoke with one of the Israeli passengers who entered the cockpit and overpowered a pilot who was reportedly attempting to sabotage the aircraft’s systems. “I salute these heroes who demonstrated extraordinary resourcefulness and courage,” he said. “They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster.”

The motive behind the apparent attack remains unclear. Netanyahu said Saudi authorities were interrogating the pilot accused of carrying out the assault. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said preliminary information suggested the attacker intended to crash the plane and kill everyone onboard, describing the episode as an “attempted jihadist terror attack.”

An Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, identified the attacker as an Omani national. Israel does not maintain formal diplomatic relations with either Saudi Arabia or Oman, relying instead on occasional dialogue through informal channels. Muscat has declined to join other regional states in normalizing ties with Israel over Palestinian rights, while Riyadh has conditioned normalization on Israel’s acceptance of a Palestinian state.

The incident comes as Israel approaches the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed. That attack triggered Israel’s war on Gaza, which according to the source has killed more than 75,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—including about 1,400 since a US-brokered ceasefire supposedly took effect in October 2025.

A second Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, FZ1081, was erroneously reported in Hebrew media to have turned around, according to The Times of Israel. The outlet said the mistake appeared to stem from a glitch on flight-tracking websites. The aircraft issued no emergency signal and was reported to be continuing to Tel Aviv without disruption.

The political fallout was immediate. Opposition leader Yair Lapid claimed Netanyahu’s political allies had tried to frame the incident as the fulfillment of warnings issued a day earlier about a possible attack on Israel ahead of legislative elections scheduled for October 27. Lapid wrote on X that the warning about activity abroad was specific, had been in place for more than two years, and had nothing to do with planes or anything resembling what happened that morning.