Investigators said the co-pilot of an Israel-bound Flydubai flight attacked the other pilot and attempted to bring down the aircraft, prompting the flight to divert.

The UAE’s attorney general said the co-pilot of a flydubai flight to Israel had planned a “terrorist act” and used the cockpit’s emergency axe to attack the captain, the official UAE news agency WAM reported Saturday.

The news agency quoted Attorney General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi as saying that according to the initial findings of an investigation, “the co-pilot had attempted to carry out a terrorist act” and had “attacked the captain in the cockpit with the emergency axe and tried to take control of the aircraft”.

One of the pilots of the Israel-bound flydubai flight diverted on Wednesday attacked his co-pilot and tried to crash the plane to kill everyone, a passenger said.

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “pretty much out of control” when the stabbing took place over Jordan on the flight’s path from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

“The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother who was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.

“It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralised him,” she said.

“There was also a doctor who gave first aid, and people who treated both of them. Other than the pilot, there were no injuries, but the bigger fear was really a crash, which is exactly what he was trying to do.”

Her mother, Yasmin Abukasis, said her daughter was on the flight to attend a service for her brother killed in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack.

The daughter “thought they were going to die”, Abukasis told AFP, adding that one woman “went to the (cockpit) and saw a lot of blood”.

She said that two other pilots were on the plane and took charge, diverting it to Saudi Arabia.

AFP