After a fight between the pilots, a passenger had to shake two additional pilots to get them to take control as the plane plunged.

Published on: Sep 30, 2026, 22:05:06 IST

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There were reportedly two additional pilots on the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv that was diverted to Saudi Arabia's Tabuk, where it landed safely after an “incident”. After a physical altercation broke out between the pilot-in-command and the co-pilot, a passenger had to “shake” the additional pilots to get them to take control of the plane as they had initially frozen.

“I had to shake them to get them to move to the front and take control of the plane because it was diving,” the passenger said, according to Zvika Klein, editor of The Jerusalem Post, who wrote about the account on his X timeline.

could not independently confirm the passenger's account.

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“He (the passenger) said the additional pilots were assigned to the flight. During the emergency, he said, both initially froze. According to his account, Israeli passengers pulled the attacker out of the cockpit and got the other pilots inside. One took control of the aircraft; the other took longer to recover,” Klein wrote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave almost a similar account of what happened inside the plane as it fell about 14,300 feet in 37 seconds. The Israeli PM said that the co-pilot stabbed the pilot-in-command while trying to crash the aircraft, and that “brave” passengers and crew then subdued the attacker, allowing the plane to land safely in Saudi Arabia.

The plane's captain and first officer were injured, according to a statement by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, carried by state-run Al Ekhbariya television, AP reported.

The captain of the plane, Smit Machchhar, is an Indian national who was previously associated with SpiceJet. He reportedly fought off the co-pilot before passengers subdued the attacker, while the additional pilots helped land the plane safely.

Video footage circulating on social media shows two men on the plane's floor, bloodied and wounded. Two people appeared to be providing medical treatment, while two others guarded the cockpit. However, the motive behind the attack is still unclear.

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