A commercial flight traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel diverted to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday morning after one of the pilots stabbed the other and attempted to crash the plane, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement.

The airline, flydubai, said the Tel Aviv-bound flight from Dubai landed safely in Tabuk, with all passengers safe.

Nearly all the passengers were Israeli nationals, Netanyahu said.The prime minister said he spoke to a passenger who recounted entering the cockpit alongside a crew member as the pilot who carried out the stabbing was trying to sabotage the aircraft systems. The passenger and crew member managed to subdue the attacker while other crew members helped stabilize the aircraft, Netanyahu said.

The prime minister later identified the pilot who was stabbed as Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, and called him a “hero.”

“Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster,” Netanyahu said. “He saved the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals.”

According to FlightRadar data, the aircraft abruptly plunged more than 14,000 feet in approximately 30 seconds about an hour and 15 minutes into the flight.

An airline spokesperson confirmed in a statement that “an altercation occurred in the flight deck” but did not give further details.

“The aircraft was successfully secured by on-duty flydubai crew traveling on the flight, who diverted and landed the aircraft safely at Tabuk Airport,” the spokesperson said.

Cluster2, the aviation company that manages airports in Saudi Arabia, including in Tabuk, where the plane landed, said the aircraft’s captain and first officer were taken to a hospital. Flydubai arranged a replacement flight for the passengers, the company said, and Netanyahu greeted them after the plane landed at Ben Gurion International Airport on Wednesday evening local time.

Netanyahu said the pilot who carried out the stabbing was arrested and under questioning by Saudi authorities.

Amir Hayek, the former Israeli ambassador to the UAE., urged others to “set aside speculation” about the episode, noting that flydubai was one of the only “airlines in the world that continued flying to Israel even during the most difficult times.”

President Donald Trump told reporters he spoke to Netanyahu “at length” about the incident. “It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job, and he stabbed the pilot,” Trump said, relaying the story as told to him by the Israeli prime minister. “Now this is the story that I heard. I don’t know if it’s true,” the president added.

Flydubai, an Emirati government-owned airline, began offering commercial flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv in 2020 after Israel and the UAE agreed to normalize relations.

The diverted flight comes just three days after Netanyahu visited the UAE on Sunday, meeting President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, where the leaders discussed strengthening bilateral ties.

Netanyahu has been under intense scrutiny ahead of critical elections in a few weeks after Haaretz, an Israeli news outlet, reported that the UAE leader and others warned him of an imminent Hamas attack ahead of Oct. 7, 2023.

Even before the passengers from the diverted flight landed in Tel Aviv, the prime minister and others in his Likud party were planning to use the episode to bolster his security credentials three weeks ahead of Israel’s close elections.

“He’ll harness it,” said a person familiar with Netanyahu’s deliberations who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive political dynamics. “He’s going to say, ‘We’re not safe anywhere, everybody’s after us, even on a commercial flight.’”

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