A passenger on the Flydubai plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, which made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, told Israeli Channel 12 about scenes of horror.
"We heard screams on the plane. Then they opened the cockpit door, and we saw blood; it turned out that someone had stabbed the pilot with a pocket knife," the anonymous woman told the TV channel via text message.
At this point official information is very scarce, but it is assumed that a violent clash occurred between the two pilots. The woman said that Israeli passengers, together with crew members, helped neutralize the attacker. "We were praying; there were also moments when we thought we would not survive," she said.
Another woman, who identified herself as Noam, told the media during a phone call: "Screams began on the plane from passengers who had understood what was happening. We understand that one of the pilots had been stabbed and seriously wounded, and they had lost control of the aircraft. It began to descend rapidly. It was very frightening."
According to Israeli media, emergency signals were transmitted after the two pilots, presumably a Russian captain and a Ukrainian first officer, entered into a violent altercation. It is currently being investigated whether a stabbing occurred between the pilots in the cockpit.
It is reported that Flydubai's CEO told Israeli transportation officials that another aircraft will depart from Dubai to Saudi Arabia, and then continue its flight to Israel. According to circulating information, one of the pilots tried to crash the plane, but the second pilot, with the help of passengers, managed to prevent his action.
This incident shows how fragile aviation safety can be when the problem comes not from an external threat, but from the cockpit itself. Passengers, who are usually powerless during a flight, this time became a decisive force, preventing the crash of the aircraft.
It is noteworthy that the assumption that the two pilots are Russian and Ukrainian creates a context that goes beyond the framework of an ordinary aviation incident. It is not yet clear whether it was a personal conflict or some deeper motive. The investigation is still ongoing, and there are no official conclusions yet.
The most important question that remains unanswered is how such an incident could have occurred in the cockpit without prior signals, and why security systems did not prevent it. Until answers to these questions are found, passengers will continue to fly, trusting that such a thing will not happen again.
