As The Moscow Times writes, on Wednesday, September 30, a Flydubai Boeing 737 from the UAE, flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, sent a distress signal and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. During the flight, the crew also reported a possible attempt to hijack the plane.
According to Israeli intelligence services, the co-pilot tried to seize control and direct the plane into a skyscraper in Tel Aviv. During the incident, the airliner lost about 4.6 thousand meters of altitude in 37 seconds.
Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that the co-pilot was “possibly a terrorist or a madman” and attacked the captain of the plane with a knife. The wounded commander managed to open the cockpit door and called for help.
According to the U.S. president, among the passengers was an Israeli plumber who pulled the attacker out of his seat and threw him back, after which other passengers restrained him. Trump added that this man had never before operated an aircraft, but when the plane began to fall “with overload beyond the permissible limit”, he sat in the pilot’s seat, pulled the control column toward himself, and leveled the airliner, after which other specialists on board took over control.
Trump clarified that he heard this story from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several other people. Netanyahu said he was investigating a plot to “smash the plane along with everyone on board”, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called the incident “an attempted jihadist attack”.
The British newspaper The Telegraph claimed that passenger Yaniv Hayun burst into the cockpit: he grabbed the attacker and then took control of the plane himself. After landing in Saudi Arabia, the co-pilot was arrested; he is allegedly a citizen of Oman. Flydubai said that the motive for what happened is being investigated and urged people not to draw premature conclusions.
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