Meridian World Desk
A FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday morning after a violent fight broke out between the two pilots inside the cockpit, triggering an emergency alert and a hijack code that briefly raised fears of a hijacking and prompted Israel to scramble fighter jets.
Flight FZ1073 had departed Dubai International Airport for Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv carrying between 174 and 180 passengers, roughly 100 of them Israeli citizens. Flight-tracking data showed the Boeing left its planned route, descended rapidly and transmitted a general emergency squawk code before switching to the internationally recognised hijack code, 7500.
For those aboard, the minutes that followed were harrowing. Passengers described a plane suddenly losing altitude with no explanation over the intercom, sustained shouting and thudding audible from behind the locked cockpit door, and cabin crew struggling to keep order as the aircraft banked away from its course over the Gulf. Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on the flight, told of a terrifying phone call in which her daughter described the chaos unfolding around her in real time. Some accounts relayed by passengers describe people rushing toward the front of the cabin as the emergency intensified, with others said to have helped restrain a member of the crew while the aircraft was still airborne — details that could not be independently verified and that officials have not confirmed.
On the ground, the hijack code set off an immediate response. Israel’s air force scrambled fighter jets as officials scrambled to determine whether the aircraft had genuinely been seized. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened consultations as the situation developed. His office later said the matter was under control and that arrangements were being made to bring the passengers home safely.
Emergency landing in Tabuk
Rather than continuing toward Israeli airspace, the aircraft turned south and sent a distress call to Tabuk airport in north-western Saudi Arabia, home to Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport. It landed safely shortly before 10am local time. Both the captain and first officer were taken to hospital with injuries sustained in the altercation. The airport, in a statement carried by Saudi state television, confirmed the pilots’ injuries.
FlyDubai, the Dubai-based low-cost carrier that is a sister airline of Emirates, confirmed the incident and the safe landing, and said it was working to get passengers onward to Israel. What caused the fight between the captain and first officer has not been established, and it remains the central question for investigators. Officials have said the emergency signals stemmed from a physical altercation between the two men rather than an actual hijacking attempt, though the underlying dispute is still unclear.
An Israeli official has said one of the pilots was carrying a knife during the confrontation, a detail that has not been corroborated elsewhere and that authorities have not confirmed. Reports that a pilot was stabbed have circulated widely but remain unconfirmed; officials have said only that both men were injured and hospitalised. Separate claims about the pilots’ nationalities, and a suggestion that one of them deliberately tried to crash the aircraft, have appeared in Israeli media but have not been verified and are not confirmed by any official statement.
Investigation under way
An investigation into the cause of the fight and the sequence of events in the cockpit is ongoing. FlyDubai and Israeli authorities have not detailed what set off the confrontation or how it escalated to the point of triggering emergency and hijack codes. For a region where a single squawk code can send fighter jets into the sky within minutes, the episode has underscored how quickly a dispute confined to two people in a cockpit can cascade into a cross-border security alert spanning the airspace of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Passengers were expected to be flown onward once arrangements were finalised, according to FlyDubai and Netanyahu’s office. No further details on the timing of their departure from Tabuk have been released.