Usually, Flydubai flight FZ1073 is a daily, direct, three-and-a-half hour flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, departing at 630am local time. Its passengers are on business, or Israeli tourists returning home.
Wednesday was typical: a nearly full flight with 174 passengers, 27 of them children, and six crew. Almost all the passengers were Israeli, according to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But what happened on board was not typical at all. There was a fight on the flight deck. The plane plunged towards the ground as the pilot lay bleeding on the cockpit floor. Passengers stormed the cabin. Israel has since called it an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack”.
Here’s what we know so far, minute by minute.
Takeoff – the first two hours
According to flight data, Flydubai FZ1073 took off at 3:05am UTC (just after 7am in Dubai), en route to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. The plane type, a Boeing 737 Max, is a popular design favoured for its fuel efficiency on short and medium routes.
Grounded 737 MAX aircraft are seen parked in Boeing Field in Seattle in 2019 (Photo: REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo)However it has a controversial history, with two catastrophic crashes followed by a years-long grounding and rectification process. Since it was re-certified as safe by aviation authorities, this plane type has flown millions of unremarkable flight-hours.
The plane climbed to its cruising altitude of 34,000 feet, and nothing untoward appears to have happened for two-thirds of the flight.
5:21 UTC – A sudden descent
Minutes before the plane was due to cross from Saudi Arabian into Jordanian airspace, flight data shows the plane took a sharp right turn and began to dive towards the ground.
“They had already served breakfast, and we ate and they cleared it,” passenger Hila Gaier told Israel’s Kan radio. “Suddenly, the plane plummeted.”
It fell more than 14,000 ft in under 30 seconds. Within a minute, the plane was halfway to what would be a catastrophic crash: by 5:22UTC it was at just 16,600 feet (measured by barometric altitude). It suddenly reversed, going into a steep ascent. Then, another dive, to barely 14,000 ft.
The Flydubai plane was close to its destination when it suddenly changed course (Image: Flightradar24.com)“The communications and electricity and screens cut out, and we were diving down, then we straightened out, then dived,” Gaier said.
Passenger Almog Italie thought at first it was “massive turbulence”.
This was not turbulence, or a mechanical fault.
According to a Flydubai official statement, “an altercation occurred in the flight deck”.
According to Netanyahu, who made a video statement about the incident on Wednesday, “one of the pilots stabbed the second pilot, and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board”.
Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said the wounded captain Capt. Smit Machchhar, an Indian citizen, bloodied and lying on the floor after the alleged attack by his co-pilot, drew on “the last moments of his energy” to click open the release on the cockpit door.
On X, Netanyahu said “Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door … he is a true hero”.
Screams in the cabin
Many passengers, even before they discovered the cause of the steep dive, thought they were about to die. Footage from the plane shows the level of fear and panic on board.
Naama Bershadski told media she simply closed her eyes and prayed.
Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “pretty much out of control… on the way to crashing”.
Peleg Itali, a 16-year-old student, recalled thinking “I’m so screwed, I’m so screwed. I don’t deserve to die like this”.
A 3D diagram of the flightpath of FZ1073 – note vertical and horizontal scales differ (Image from Flightradar24, used with permission)One of the first passengers to realise what was happening to the pilot was a woman, who was in a bathroom close to the cockpit with her daughter.
Zvika Manes, who was reportedly seated in the front row, told Israel’s Channel 12 “My little daughter went to the bathroom, my wife accompanied her. She heard screams and struggles from the cockpit, loud noises coming from there”.
She asked one of the crew to open the cockpit door, to see what was happening.
Passenger Asaf Rajuan told Israeli TV he had thought the screams were coming from the bathroom.
“A mother of a girl came out screaming, and then we realised something had happened,” he told Israeli TV. “The plane lost control and went down 90 degrees.”
Manes and Rajuan were the first to the cockpit door, which had now swung open.
They saw confronting scenes.
The counter attack
“The cockpit was filling with blood,” Rajuan said.
He was with Manes, who told the New York Times he saw the pilot, bloodied with stab wounds, locked in a melee with his colleague.
A third passenger, Yaniv Hayoun said it was difficult to intervene. He told Israeli TV: “The pilot who was stabbed was close to the door, so it was difficult for us to open it.
“I saw the attacker on the instruments, between the two chairs. There were no pilots on the chairs. I choked him and pulled him out first. He tried to destroy the instruments. It was seconds.”
Netanyahu later said the attacker had been “trying to sabotage the plane’s systems”.
Israeli passenger Asaf Rajuan speaks to reporters after landing at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP via Getty Images)Manes and Rajuan also leaped into action.
“It was a harrowing experience, just like in the movies,” Rajuan later told reporters. “I never believed something like this could happen in real life. We all really showed resourcefulness together, without overthinking it, we decided it was a case of do or die.
“‘To be or not to be’, as they say. We decided to go for it.”
Manes told Israeli TV: “These were not easy struggles” .
They quickly got the upper hand, and tied up the attacker using the cord of a flight deck headset.
The untrained ‘lion’
But they still had a problem: nobody was flying the plane. Hayoun said as soon as he had pulled the attacker away from the pilot seats, he tried to figure out how to stop them from crashing.
“I started pulling the controls,” he said.
Later when asked by Netanyahu how he knew what to do, he replied: “”I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr Prime Minister”.
Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayoun, with blood stains on his shirt, is welcomed at the arrivals gate at Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Tomer Appelbaum)The plane started to level off a little more, he said. Netanyahu said Hayoun saved everyone’s lives. “I see you and I see a lion — a big hero.” he told him.
Within seconds, two more men were in the cockpit. Said Rajuan: “There were two other pilots. I think they were both British. They were sitting in row six, one row in front of me … They didn’t really understand what was happening at first.”
Hayoun recalled: “The pilot told me he was taking control from here”.
According to the official Flydubai statement, “the aircraft was successfully secured by on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight, who diverted and landed the aircraft safely”.
Rajuan added: “I have to mention ‘James’, if I’m not mistaken. He took control of the controls and managed to stabilise the plane.”
5:30- 7:00 UTC – the shocked aftermath
It is currently unclear how long the altercation went for, and when the plane was back under control.
According to flight data, seconds after its precipitous dive, at 05:28 UTC, the aircraft issued an emergency code, 7700, which indicates a “general emergency”. Such a code is typed into a panel on the cockpit’s central console.
Soon after, at 5:35 UTC, it issued a much more rare “squawk code”: 7500, used for “unlawful interference or hijacking”.
For a few minutes it tracked north-west, just on the Saudi side of the Jordanian border. Then at 5:42 UTC it turned in a tight circle and retraced its steps. The aircraft’s altitude oscillated around 15,000 feet and ground speed varied significantly throughout the rest of the flight, according to Flightradar24’s analysis.
This may be a symptom of damage to the plane during the incident. Images shared online after the plane landed showed the tail rudder was missing. Experts said it was likely ripped from the plane during its precipitous dive, or during the attempt to pull out of the dive.
Finally the plane turned south-east to land safely at Tabuk in western Saudi Arabia.
Flight data shows the plane’s sudden descent, followed by half an hour of unsteady flight before the final descent into Tabuk (Image: Flightradar24.com)Inside the plane, the men who overcame the attacker did not let their guard down. “For 55 minutes we held him,” Rajwan said.
Meanwhile another passenger, identified in the media as Shota Musev, a dentist, attended to the wounded pilot. Graphic video shared online show the pilot covered in blood.
Musev said he treated the injured pilot in midair for severe wounds to his head and cuts on his fingers. He said the man was “”praying the whole time … and I was afraid we would really lose him”.
Meanwhile, those at the front of the plane feared the attacker may not have been acting alone. Musev and others “spread a few more people inside the plane so that if something happened we would be able to simply take control”, he told reporters.
Passenger Almog Italie told Reuters: “most of the passengers kept calm and were very supportive to each other” on their way to Tabuk.
Netanyahu said “the stabbing pilot was arrested and is currently being interrogated by the Saudi authorities”.
The Embassy of India in Riyadh issued a statement saying the pilot, Smit Machchhar, had been admitted to hospital and was in a stable condition.
Flydubai arranged another plane to take passengers and crew to Tel Aviv, where they were met by media and Netanyahu.
The investigation begins
In a statement, Flydubai warned against leaping to conclusions.
It said: “At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation. We urge all parties to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts.
“Our immediate priority is to ensure the ongoing safety, health, and wellbeing of all passengers and crew members involved in this incident and support the official investigation.”
Its flights to and from Israel will be suspended while the investigation continues.
Israeli authorities, however, have been more blunt.
Defence minister Israel Katz said the incident “was an attempted jihadist terrorist attack, which was thwarted only thanks to the bravery of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist, and with their own hands returned control of the aircraft to an additional flight crew that was present there”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Yaniv Hayoun, a passenger on the FlyDubai flight (Photo: GPO/Handout via REUTERS)“The terrorist had one intention: to crash the aircraft with all its passengers aboard,” he said.
He did not share evidence to substantiate the terrorism claim.
Netanyahu, who has been trying to salvage his security credentials ahead of elections in later October, echoed the claim and said he had “instructed the security services to prepare for additional potential threats”.
US president Donald Trump told reporters in the White House that the attacker was either a terrorist or a “whack job”, but said he didn’t have first-hand information but was just relaying what Netanyahu told him.
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