A routine morning hop between Dubai and Tel Aviv turned into one of the more alarming aviation incidents in recent memory. flydubai flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 operating the daily Dubai–Tel Aviv service, diverted to Tabuk in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after one of its pilots reportedly tried to hijack the aircraft, stabbing his colleague in the cockpit.
According to passenger accounts carried by the BBC, travellers heard screaming before seeing the co-pilot pinned to the floor by the other pilot, who was armed with a knife. People seated near the front of the jet helped restrain the attacker and pull him out of the cockpit, while two off-duty pilots sitting at the rear were brought forward to take control. A dentist on board reportedly gave the wounded pilot life-saving care before the plane landed.
The flight data shows how close things came to catastrophe. Just over two hours into the flight, the jet dropped from roughly 30,875 feet to 16,750 feet in 29 seconds amid erratic changes in vertical speed. It first squawked the emergency code 7700, then switched to 7500 — the transponder code for hijacking. Tabuk Airport received the first distress call at 8:44 AM local time, and the aircraft touched down there safely about an hour later, having turned back over Jordan. Officials in Israel said the rapid descent meant a major disaster was narrowly avoided.
There were 174 people on board, most of them Israeli. Both the injured pilot and his alleged attacker were taken to hospital in Tabuk with injuries. flydubai quickly dispatched a replacement 737 MAX 8 from Dubai to pick up the stranded passengers and continue them to Tel Aviv, arriving several hours late. The airline said all passengers were safe and accounted for, and that it was working closely with the authorities.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is limited but worth knowing: the Dubai–Tel Aviv corridor is one of the busiest routes in the region since the two countries normalised ties, and this appears to be an isolated criminal act rather than a security breakdown at the airport or airline level. Anyone booked on flydubai flights in the coming days may see residual delays as the airline rebalances aircraft, and those with connections through Tel Aviv Ben Gurion should build in buffer time. Otherwise, flights on the route are operating as normal, and investigations will now focus on how a weapon made it into the cockpit — a question that matters to anyone who flies.
