A pilot brawl, then a nosedive

When flydubai flight FZ1073 suddenly plunged from over 30,000 feet yesterday, passenger Almog Italie said it felt like the plane was passing through “massive turbulence” before he realised a life-or-death struggle had unfolded in the cockpit.

Italie described passengers running to the front of the cabin and commotion in front of the cockpit, where Israeli officials said the co-pilot had stabbed the captain to try to crash the plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv with more than 170 Israelis on board.

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“It was dropping like for 20, 30 seconds, and then stabilised, and then started dropping again, and stabilised again, and then we saw that (there) are people in the front, directly (in front of ) the cockpit,” he told Reuters. “Crew members and passengers from the front of the airplane took over and got control of the two pilots.”

Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said the wounded captain, bloodied and lying on the floor, had drawn on “the last moments of his energy” to click open the release on the cockpit door.

“At that moment, some of the passengers that realised something was happening raced forward, entered the pilot’s cabin. They saw the injured pilot on the ground, and the other … the attacking pilot was standing over the control panel, bashing the control panel,” he said.

A passenger subdued the attacker, he said.

A video filmed on board and verified by Reuters captured the aftermath.

In it, two wounded men are seen lying on the floor, both bloodied. A voice speaking in Hebrew off camera says one of them is the pilot “they tried to murder”. A voice off camera identifies the other as the attacker, lying on his side with three stripes on his epaulette, indicating that he is a co-pilot.

A reserve flydubai crew that had been on board took control of the plane and landed it safely at Tabuk Airport (TUU), a flydubai spokesperson said.

A playback of the flight posted on flight-tracking website flightradar24 showed the plane cruising at 34,000 feet heading westwards over Saudi Arabia when it dropped more than 14,000 feet in 30 seconds, before veering northwest. It briefly crossed into Jordan, then returned to Saudi airspace and flew to Tabuk.

Flydubai said in a statement that the underlying reasons for the event remained unknown and warned against “premature speculation”.