Flydubai flight to Israel diverted to Saudi Arabia after emergency alert

A commercial flight from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Israel has been forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

The Flydubai plane transmitted an emergency alert shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, according to publicly available flight-tracking information.

The airline said the plane “experienced an incident while en route”, adding that it landed safely at Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, which also happens to be a military base, and all passengers were safe and accounted for.

Flight-tracking data indicated that it was a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

According to data from the Flightradar24 website, the aircraft suddenly lost altitude during the flight, dropping from nearly 34,000 feet (more than 10km) at 05:21 GMT to less than 17,000 feet at 05:22 GMT.

The plane issued an “unlawful interference” alert, apparently due to an altercation between the pilots on board, Israeli media reports said, citing officials.

The pilot and copilot were admitted to hospital with injuries, Tabuk airport said, adding that it was coordinating with Flydubai to secure a replacement aircraft.

Israel said it was organising the safe return of Israeli passengers from Saudi Arabia.

“The incident is under control, and all measures are currently being deployed in order to return the Israeli passengers safely to Israel,” a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

Passengers on the plane told Israel’s Channel 12 by phone that they heard shouts from the front of the plane and heard the altercation between the pilots, and that the plane dipped steeply before the emergency landing.

At the time of reporting, all the passengers were on the plane and there was a heavy presence of Saudi security forces around.

Yasmin Abukasis was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying her daughter Miriam, who was among the passengers on the flight, had told her that she had heard screaming and that a man holding a knife had forced one of the pilots onto the floor, and that there was blood everywhere.

“What we understand, according to flight radar tracking, is that two emergency signals were transmitted from the flight – the first was a general emergency signal and the second, a few minutes later, seemed to indicate some kind of unlawful interference on the flight,” Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Doha, Qatar, said.

“Tracking data also shows that the aircraft plunged nearly 14,000 feet within 30 seconds during the incident – a steep, sharp descent that would have unnerved passengers.”

Later on Wednesday, Flightradar24 temporarily showed a second Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverting back to Dubai, but then showed it continuing on its planned route to Israel.

Flydubai is a low-cost sister carrier of Emirates airline. The UAE has become a popular holiday destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020.

Flydubai’s fleet relies entirely on variants of the 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle aircraft widely used by airlines around the world. It has nearly 100 planes, including 69 of the Max 8 variant.

The flight originated from Dubai airport, the Middle East’s busiest and the world’s largest in terms of international travel. It handled a record 95.2 million passengers last year.

It is not the first time a flight between Israel and the UAE has landed in Saudi Arabia. A Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Riyadh in September 2025 due to a medical incident, the Israeli media reported at the time.