Israel-bound plane drops 17,000 feet after pilot reportedly stabbed

• Hijacking attempt: Israeli sources told CNN they suspect the co-pilot of an Israel-bound Flydubai flight forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia tried to hijack the plane after stabbing the captain. It is unclear if the intention was to crash the jet or take hostages.

• Passenger’s fear: The incident caused the aircraft, traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, to plummet 17,400 feet in less than two minutes, flight tracking data shows. One passenger told Israeli media there were moments she believed she was going to die.

• Israel’s response: It also prompted Israel’s prime minister and defense minister to hold a security consultation . Separately, an official said Israel is exploring the possibility of sending a military or civilian plane to bring passengers home.

Two Israeli sources tell CNN they suspect the co-pilot of the Israel-bound Flydubai flight was trying to hijack the plane after stabbing the captain.

The sources said it was not yet clear whether the intention would have been to crash the plane or to land it and take hostages.

Both the pilot and co-pilot were injured in the incident on the flight which was traveling to Tel Aviv but forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

Photographs apparently taken aboard the diverted Flydubai flight show a male passenger in a bloodied t-shirt and jeans.

The two photos, circulating widely on social media, show the unidentified man sitting in his seat and standing up, seemingly uninjured, but with large blood stains on his clothes.

Several of those who were on the flight have told Israeli media that the attacker was subdued by the passengers after stabbing the pilot.

A host of Israeli agencies, including Shin Bet, Mossad, the military and the country’s transportation ministry, are involved in investigating the Flydubai incident that took place this morning, an Israeli official told CNN.

One of the main questions being looked into is why the flight crew included a pilot from a country with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations, the official said.

One of the pilots on Flydubai flight FZ1073 was Omani , two Israeli officials told CNN earlier. One of the officials said the Omani national was the co-pilot, allegedly the attacker in the violent incident.

Oman and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations. It is not yet clear how the Omani pilot would have obtained clearance to fly to Israel.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond and Catherine Nicholls contributed to this reporting.

The mother of a passenger on board Flydubai flight FZ1073 said that her daughter told her the pilot of the aircraft was stabbed.

The pilot was “screaming ‘help, help, help’,” Yasmin Abukasi told the Reuters news agency.

“She said it’s crazy, crazy time. It’s very hard to explain what’s happened there, but it was big stress. And after the plane start to go down, and they thinks they’re going to (crash) and now they land in Saudi, the people (are) in stress and shock,” she said.

Footage from the diverted Israel-bound Flydubai flight posted on social media shows passengers celebrating as the plane lands in Saudi Arabia.

People in the video can be seen clapping, chanting and cheering as the aircraft touches down at Tabuk Airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia.

The aircraft dropped more than 17,000 feet, according to tracking data reviewed by CNN, after a “violent incident” broke out between the pilots.

The captain and co-pilot of the diverted flight were both injured in this morning’s incident and taken to hospital, Saudi Arabia’s leading aviation operator Cluster2 said in a statement .

Meanwhile, a passenger told Israel’s i24 channel that there were moments she believed she was going to die.

CNN’s Eyad Kourdi, Catherine Nicholls, Dana Karni and Ivana Kottasová contributed reporting.

Flydubai is wholly owned by the Dubai government, which established the airline in 2008 through the Dubai Aviation Corporation.

Operating from Dubai International Airport, the airline serves 131 destinations including to the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Flydubai is often considered as the low-cost sister carrier to the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Emirates airline. It is a separate entity, although both ultimately share the same owner - the Dubai government, via its sovereign wealth fund, the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

Currently, the airline’s fleet consists of variations of the Boeing 737 aircraft.

The airline has maintained a solid safety record since its establishment. Its only fatal incident was in March 2016, when a flight from Dubai to Rostov-on-Don, Russia, crashed during a landing attempt amid high ground-level wind and poor visibility. All 62 passengers and crew members on board were killed.

More details are beginning to emerge surrounding this morning’s incident aboard Flydubai flight FZ1073, which was traveling from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv in Israel.

Israeli authorities suspect the Flydubai incident may have been an attempted terrorist attack , two Israeli officials and an Israeli source familiar with the situation said.

An Israeli official told CNN that information gathered suggests the co-pilot tried to stab the pilot , and a passenger helped to take him down.

The captain and co-pilot of the plane were both injured in the incident and taken to hospital, Saudi Arabia’s leading aviation operator said.

One of the pilots on Flydubai flight FZ1073 was Omani , two Israeli officials told CNN. One of the officials said the Omani national was the co-pilot, who was allegedly the attacker.

We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.

CNN’s Tal Shalev, Jeremy Diamond, Dana Karni, Ivana Kottasová and Eyad Kourdi contributed to this reporting.

One of the pilots on Flydubai flight FZ1073 was Omani, two Israeli officials told CNN.

One of the officials said the Omani national was the co-pilot, who was alledegly the attacker in the violent incident that took place aboard the plane.

Here is the timeline of the diverted Flydubai Flight FZ1073, based on publicly available data:

6:05 a.m. Flight FZ1073 takes off from Dubai and flies west.

8:20 a.m. The plane begins losing altitude and turns sharply to the north. It descends 17,400 feet in just under two minutes.

8:31 a.m. The flight issues a distress call by squawking code 7700, the International Civil Aviation Organization code for emergency.

8:35 a.m. The flight squawks code 7500, which signals aircraft hijacking.

8:41 a.m. The plane turns around and enters Jordanian airspace.

8:46 a.m. The plane re-enters Saudi airspace.

9:54 a.m. Flight FZ1073 touches down at Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport.

The captain and co-pilot of the diverted Flydubai flight FZ1073 were both injured in this morning’s incident and taken to hospital, Saudi Arabia’s leading aviation operator Cluster2 said in a statement a short while ago.

The Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk received a distress call from the Flydubai plane requesting an emergency landing at the airport at 8:44 a.m. local time this morning (1:44 a.m. ET), it said.

The airport declared a state of emergency, and the plane landed safely just over an hour later, it continued.

Both the plane’s captain and co-pilot were transferred to hospital because of their injuries, the aviation operator said, while passengers were treated in the airport terminal.

Coordination has also been carried out to arrange a replacement aircraft following this morning’s incident, Cluster2 said.

Dubai - from where the diverted Israel-bound flight was returning - has become one of Israel’s busiest and most frequently served international destinations.

This is thanks to the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2020, through the brokered Abraham Accords , which allowed commercial aviation services between the two countries to resume.

Since then, the aviation corridor between Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) and Dubai International Airport (DXB) has seen significant growth, with both Israel- and UAE-based airlines expanding operations to meet the demand for tourism and business travel.

According to flight tracking website FlightRadar24, there are typically 70 flights running between Dubai (DXB) and Tel Aviv (TLV) per week. Flydubai is the main carrier operating the route, in addition to Emirates and Israeli airlines Israir and El Al.

Data from Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in December showed that 1.1 million Israeli passengers traveled to Dubai in 2025.

A passenger on board the Flydubai flight told Israel’s i24 channel that one of the pilots on the flight was stabbed and there were moments she believed she was going to die.

“We just heard screams, and then the cockpit door opened and we saw a huge amount of blood,” the passenger, identified only as Miriam, told the channel.

She said one of the pilots was injured and was receiving first aid but it was unclear who stabbed them.

She said the plan was “completely out of control.”

There has been no confirmation of what happened on board the flight but an Israeli official told us that information gathered suggests the co-pilot tried to stab the pilot, and a passenger helped to take him down.

Israeli authorities suspect the Flydubai incident may have been an attempted terrorist attack, two Israeli officials and an Israeli source familiar with the situation said.

One of the officials said that information gathered by Israeli authorities indicates that the co-pilot tried to stab the pilot, and an Israeli passenger helped restrain the co-pilot.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancelled his schedule to hold consultations with Israel’s top security officials about the incident, the source said.

The footage above, from Flightradar24, shows Flydubai Flight FZ1073 head to Tel Aviv from Dubai diverted over Jordanian airspace towards Saudi Arabia.

The plane, according to the flight tracking data, veers off its path to fly into Jordanian airspace, then loops back on itself to re-enter Saudi airspace, instead of traveling onwards to Israel.

Earlier today, sources told CNN that the Flydubai aircraft was diverted following a “violent incident” between two pilots. An Israeli official said the incident was not a hijacking and that the plane has now landed.

While we establish exactly what happened on this morning’s Flydubai flight, let’s look at some previous incidents in which fights have broken out between crew members.

In June 2022, two Air France pilots were involved in an inflight altercation and exchanged “inappropriate gestures” while in the cockpit of an A320 heading from Geneva to Paris, the airline said. The spat led to the suspension of both pilots.

In January 2018, it was reported that two Indian pilots were fired after they fought inside a cockpit during a flight from London to Mumbai operated by private airline Jet Airways. The fight broke out when the male pilot slapped the female pilot, according to reports, and the cockpit was left unattended twice during the incident.

Two Iraqi Airways pilots had an altercation during a flight from Iran to Iraq which broke out into a physical fight at 37,000 feet in July 2018, according to reports at the time, which resulted in both being suspended.

A “violent incident” between two pilots caused a Flydubai aircraft traveling from Dubai, United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv, Israel to divert to Saudi Arabia this morning, sources told CNN.

Here’s what we know about the situation so far:

The aircraft descended 17,400 feet over northwestern Saudi Arabia in just under two minutes at around 1:20 a.m. ET, flight tracking data reviewed by CNN shows. The plane transmitted an emergency signal at 1:32 a.m. ET.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held consultations over the aviation incident, his office said today, adding that the situation was “under control.”

Flydubai confirmed that one of its aircraft “experienced an incident,” adding that the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport (TUU) and all passengers are safe and accounted for.

Israel is exploring the possibility of sending a plane to Saudi Arabia to bring home passengers who landed there after the diversion, an Israeli official told CNN.

CNN’s Sophie Tanno and Kim Kelaita contributed to this reporting.

The emergency landing of an Israel-bound flight in Saudi Arabia marked a rare mass arrival of Israelis in the kingdom, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel.

Just a few years ago, Israeli airlines and Israel-bound flights were forbidden from even entering Saudi airspace, forcing Israeli holidaymakers to take an hours long detour while traveling east to avoid the vast kingdom.

That changed in 2022, when Riyadh unilaterally allowed Israeli flights to use its airspace as part of a push by the Biden administration to normalize ties between the two countries. It was a milestone for Israeli aviation, significantly shortening routes to Asia, and what allowed Wednesday’s Dubai-Tel Aviv flight to fly over Saudi Arabia.

This wasn’t the first time scores of Israelis unexpectedly landed in the kingdom. In 2023, a Tel Aviv-bound Air Seychelles flight made an emergency landing in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah because of an electrical problem, forcing passengers to stay at an airport hotel. And last year, another Flydubai plane landed in the Saudi capital Riyadh after a passenger suffered a stroke.

Such incidents have been seen as rare signs of Saudi-Israeli cooperation, even as formal normalization remains out of reach.

The Gaza war and its devastating humanitarian toll have hardened Saudi Arabia’s position on recognizing Israel. Riyadh says it will not establish diplomatic relations without the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Israel is exploring the possibility of sending a plane to Saudi Arabia to bring home passengers who landed there after the diversion of an Israel-bound flight, an Israeli official told CNN.

The plane could be a military or civilian plane of Israel’s national EI AI airline.

A Flydubai spokesperson earlier said one of its aircraft flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed safely in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport (TUU) after it “experienced an incident,” and that all passengers are safe and accounted for.

The Flydubai aircraft involved in the ‘violent incident” descended 17,400 feet – from 34,000 to around 16,600 feet – in just under two minutes at around 1:20 a.m. ET, flight tracking data reviewed by CNN shows.

The plane’s speed fluctuated sharply, accelerating before rapidly slowing.

This rapid change in altitude and speed is clearly visible on the flight’s tracker, which you can see below in our graphic:

Flydubai confirmed that one of its aircraft “experienced an incident while en route” as it was flying from Dubai International Airport to Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday, but gave few other details.

A Flydubai spokesperson said the aircraft landed safely in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport (TUU) and all passengers are safe and accounted for.

“Our teams are working closely with the relevant authorities. Further updates will be issued as additional confirmed details become available,” the spokesperson said.

Sources earlier told us that a “violent incident” between two pilots was behind the diversion.