While other Israeli passengers fought the attacker near the cockpit, he was trying to get two additional pilots to move. The aircraft was diving, he said. The men who could fly it had frozen.
“I had to shake them to get them to move to the front and take control of the plane, because it was diving.”
The Israeli passenger described those moments to me during several hours of WhatsApp correspondence on Wednesday. He was still in Saudi Arabia, where his flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had made an emergency landing. By his account, he had been part of the group that intervened at the front of the aircraft.
When we first made contact, he wanted to correct the reporting.
“I think the newspapers are reporting things that aren’t true,” he wrote. He asked me to send him what we knew so he could tell me what was wrong.
🚨Footage from social media shows passengers clapping & celebrating the successful landing of the Flydubai plane
According to the passengers’ intews:
– The pilot, who allegedly intended to carry out a terrorist attack, was disarmed by passengers with the crew
– An additional… https://t.co/fyhaV3G7DU pic.twitter.com/IvhESbteBP
— Lisa Singh (@YakushinaLisa) September 30, 2026
Attacker stabs pilot, passengers restrain hijacker with charger cables
I offered to call. He said he felt uncomfortable speaking with soldiers around him. We continued by message, on and off through the afternoon. I told him I would protect his identity.
He began with a pilot attacking another pilot. There was a small knife, he said, and repeated stabbing. The attacker was trying to force the wounded man out of the cockpit. The wounded pilot was resisting.
I asked how the cockpit door had opened. He said the attacker was trying to push the other pilot out, apparently to take control alone. Israeli passengers sitting near the front rushed toward the struggle.
Flydubai confirmed that flight FZ1073 landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and that all passengers were safe and accounted for. The detailed sequence the passenger described, including the identities and roles of the crew members, has not been independently verified.
He was precise about his own involvement. Others had physically fought the attacker. He had concentrated on getting the additional pilots to the cockpit and finding something to restrain the man the passengers were trying to subdue.
According to his account, they pulled the attacker out and got the other pilots inside. One took control of the aircraft; the other took longer to recover from the shock.
I wanted to understand who these additional pilots were. Had they happened to be traveling on the flight? He said both worked for flydubai and had been assigned to be there. His understanding was that the airline carried additional pilots on flights to Israel. That arrangement still requires confirmation.
He called his own role “combat support,” adding a smiley face to the message.
They needed restraints.
“What did you use?” I asked.
“Charging cables.”
“In the desert, every thorn is a flower,” he added.
Israeli dentist treats wounded pilot
He also described an Israeli dentist treating the wounded pilot. He said the pilot was gravely injured and credited the dentist with saving his life. The pilot’s medical condition could not be independently established.
Throughout our exchange, the passenger called the attacker a terrorist. He was angry that anyone doubted what, to him, had been obvious. When I asked what supported that conclusion, he described the repeated stabbing and the effort to force the other pilot out of the cockpit.
On a particular claim circulating about the incident, he gave a firm answer. I asked whether he had heard the attacker shout “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is greatest.”
“I was standing right next to the cockpit and didn’t hear it, and others who were with me didn’t hear it either,” he wrote.
“None of us heard it.”
His conviction about the attack was clear. Its motive remained unconfirmed in the material available for this account.
As we continued corresponding, he described what had happened after the landing. Saudi doctors were attending to children and passengers who were panicking. Food had been provided.
“How are the Saudis?” I asked.
“Very nice,” he replied. “Very understanding.”
A senior Saudi figure had approached the Israeli dentist, he said, congratulated him for saving the pilot, and thanked him. Then the Saudi took the dentist’s hand and walked with him.
The passenger tried to explain the gesture to me. Holding hands, he wrote, was a local expression of warmth.
A few minutes later, I asked how he was doing.
He said he had yet to absorb what had happened. During the emergency, he had felt detached and kept carrying out tasks. He thought it would hit him when he landed in Israel.
Then he began telling me about the children. The flight was full of families returning from vacations, he said.
“There were terrible screams from children who didn’t want to die.”
One of the men fighting the attacker had a daughter on the flight.
“One girl whose father was fighting the terrorist screamed that she didn’t want him to die,” he wrote.
“That was the only moment when I stopped and thought about my own children.”
