Tzvika Manes, a passenger seated in the front row of FlyDubai Flight 1073 to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, said he heard bloodcurdling screams from the cockpit as the aircraft plunged toward the Saudi desert.
In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Manes recounted leaping from his seat to retrieve his 6-year-old daughter from the bathroom. The cockpit door was partly open. A pilot, bloodied with stab wounds, had lurched out and was locked in a melee with the plane’s other pilot, he said.
Mr. Manes said he was one of three passengers who subdued the aggressive pilot in a midair struggle, narrowly averting catastrophe. He gave a harrowing account of what happened inside the cockpit, as they wrestled the pilot pressing the attack and landed the plane, in a brief telephone interview.
The compartment itself was disheveled, spattered with blood, he said. The pilot who was attacked — who Mr. Manes said appeared to be Indian — was so badly injured that Mr. Manes said he was amazed that the man had managed to escape from the pilots’ compartment.
“The Indian pilot was struggling — he managed to open the door to get help to save himself,” said Mr. Manes, who added that the bleeding pilot fell out of the cockpit as the other pilot was on top of him, stabbing him.
Then, Mr. Manes said, he and two other passengers “jumped on” the armed pilot and grappled with him to stop the attack. They used the cables from the flight’s headphone sets to tie up the pilot and restrain him, Mr. Manes said.
Meanwhile, passengers on the flight shrieked in terror as the plane quickly lost altitude, with people “flying out of their seats,” before the plane stabilized, Mr. Manes said. He described the scene as traumatic and like a “horror movie.”
After the pilot was restrained, other passengers on the flight with flying experience took control of the aircraft and landed it, Mr. Manes said.
The plane arrived in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where passengers disembarked, some of them in bloodstained clothing. They waited for a replacement aircraft sent by FlyDubai to continue to Tel Aviv. By Wednesday night, all the passengers had arrived safely in Israel.
Israeli officials said on Wednesday that much about the flight remained unclear, including what motivated the attacking pilot and whether it was specifically an attack on Israelis, as many people in Israel — including some in the government — quickly concluded. The country has been increasingly isolated over the wars in Gaza and Iran and antisemitic attacks are on the rise.
A FlyDubai spokesperson urged all parties “to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts.” The airline later said it was suspending all flights to and from Israel pending an investigation into the episode.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would later identify the pilot who was stabbed as Capt. Smit Machchhar, an Indian citizen. “Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic midair disaster,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
The Indian Embassy in Riyadh confirmed the pilot’s identity and said in a statement that he was in a hospital in Tabuk in stable condition.
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