New details are emerging about the drama aboard the Flydubai flight to Tel Aviv, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the passengers’ intervention “prevented a new 9/11”. The wounded captain is in a stable condition in hospital in Saudi Arabia, the first officer who allegedly stabbed him remains in custody and his motives are being investigated, while Flydubai has suspended flights to and from Israel.
Meanwhile, accounts from those on board describe the dramatic moments in the cockpit, the sudden loss of altitude and the intervention of passengers who managed to restrain the attacker and avert disaster.
From Dubai to an emergency landing in Tabuk, Al Arabiya English uses AI visuals to piece together what unfolded aboard Flydubai flight FZ1073. pic.twitter.com/ylDbeehqkO
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) September 30, 2026
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the incident as an attempted terrorist attack that also targeted Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates.
The pilot, Smit Matsar, is being treated in the city of Tabuk, where the aircraft made an emergency landing after the incident.
Captain in a “stable condition”
The Indian embassy in Riyadh announced that Matsar is receiving the necessary medical care and that, according to the latest update, his condition is stable.
“Our embassy in Riyadh and our consulate in Jeddah are monitoring the health of Mr Smit Matsar, the brave Indian pilot of the Flydubai flight that was diverted to Tabuk,” it said in a statement.
🚨 Bleeding at 34,000 Feet, Indian Pilot Smit Machchhar Helped Save Nearly 180 Lives and IRAN
— The Tathya (@_TheTathya) September 30, 2026
📌 Here's what really happened:
> Flydubai flight FZ1073 was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv
> Around 170–180 passengers were onboard
> A Muslim co-pilot stabbed Indian-origin… pic.twitter.com/nmyaeWsWNF
Indian diplomatic officials are in contact with his family and the Saudi authorities, and have pledged to continue providing every possible support.
‘We reacted in time’
We reacted in time, say the three passengers who stopped the pilot who had stabbed his colleague. All those on board have returned safely to Israel, where they were greeted by Netanyahu.
Within a matter of minutes, the Flydubai flight went from the brink of tragedy to safety, according to the accounts of the passengers who managed to stop the pilot who tried to send the Boeing crashing to the ground.
EXCLUSIVE: Sean Hannity presses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on whether Iran could be connected to the attack aboard the Israel-bound Flydubai flight.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 1, 2026
HANNITY: "Is there any indication as of now of any Iranian involvement in this incident?"
NETANYAHU: "It's too… pic.twitter.com/kSAYMedmU5
The roughly 180 people on board landed in Israel on Wednesday afternoon, with their loved ones waiting for them at the airport.
Netanyahu was also there and had the chance to speak with the passengers.
Netanyahu: “He saved lives. He is a true hero”
Benjamin Netanyahu publicly praised the captain’s courage, noting that, despite his serious injuries, he resisted the attacker and opened the cockpit door.
“I salute the Indian pilot Smit Matsar for his unrivalled courage. Although he was stabbed and seriously injured, he fought, resisted, opened the cockpit door and allowed passengers and crew to restrain the attacker, averting an aviation tragedy,” the Israeli prime minister wrote on X.
According to Netanyahu, the captain “saved the lives of 174 people”, among them Israeli citizens.
This man is a hero.
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) September 30, 2026
Captain Smit Machchhar, the Indian captain of flydubai Flight 1073, fought back after being stabbed in the cockpit.
Despite being severely injured, he managed to unlock the cockpit door – allowing Israeli passengers and the Emirati crew to intervene and save… pic.twitter.com/x4W3mtQkag
“Captain Smit Matsar resisted after the knife attack he suffered in the cockpit. Despite being seriously wounded, he managed to unlock the cockpit door, allowing Israeli passengers and crew members from the United Arab Emirates to step in and save all the passengers. Together, their extraordinary courage saved 174 lives. An Indian. Israelis. Emiratis. Different nationalities. One extraordinary act of courage,” Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in its own statement.
Netanyahu: “They prevented a new 9/11”
In fresh remarks to Fox News, Netanyahu revealed details of his meeting with Yaniv Hayoun, the Israeli passenger who restrained the attacker on the Flydubai flight.
“This is truly enormous courage, which prevented a new 9/11,” the Israeli prime minister told Sean Hannity.
NEW VIDEO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets Yaniv, the passenger credited with helping stop an apparent attack aboard an Israel-bound Flydubai flight.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 30, 2026
Yaniv rushed toward the cockpit as chaos unfolded, helping subdue the attacker before off-duty crew members took… pic.twitter.com/czWPyaOF4s
Netanyahu said that, when they met, he asked Hayoun what he did for a living. “I asked him: ‘What do you do?’ and he replied: ‘I’m a plumber!'” he said.
The Israeli prime minister described his intervention as “an astonishing act of heroism”, adding that the passengers who stepped in “stopped a catastrophe that could have had global dimensions”.
Flydubai suspends flights to and from Israel
Following the incident, Flydubai announced that it is temporarily suspending all its flights to and from Israel until the investigation is complete.
The airline has confirmed that there was a “scuffle in the cockpit” and that Flydubai crew members travelling on the flight managed to secure the aircraft and bring it to Tabuk airport.
Two replacement aircraft were sent to Saudi Arabia for the passengers and crew. The repatriation flight left Tabuk at 17:40 local time and arrived in Tel Aviv about an hour later.
The airline said its priority is the safety and health of passengers and crew members, as well as support for the official investigation.
Israel: “The Abraham Accords were the target”
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs went a step further in its assessment of the incident.
The ministry’s director general, Eden Bar Tal, speaking during an online briefing for Israeli ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions, described the event as an “attempted terrorist attack” targeting “Israelis, the United Arab Emirates and the Abraham Accords”.
The United Arab Emirates is one of the few Arab states to maintain official diplomatic relations with Israel, following the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, during Donald Trump’s first term as president.
The first officer’s exact motives, however, remain the subject of the official investigation.
What the passengers say: “He was trying to destroy the instruments”
The heroes of the story
One of the three passengers who managed to stop the pilot who attacked his colleague said the stabbed pilot managed to open the cockpit door shortly before collapsing from his injuries.
Know your real Avengers 🚨
— Suprvirat (@MostlyKohli) September 30, 2026
– Captain Smit Machchhar, who fought the attacker and opened the cockpit
– Asaf Redjuan, who rushed at the attacker
– Israeli dad Tzvika Mans, who tied the attacker with a cable so he couldn't move
– Yaniv Hayon, who handled the aircraft and kept it… pic.twitter.com/C7sStV7rFH
That allowed them to enter the cockpit, stop the attacker and stabilise the aircraft, which had plunged within seconds from around 34,000 feet to around 18,000 feet.
Jika Manes, one of the three, told Israel’s Channel 12 how he realised what had happened in the cockpit.
He said his wife had been accompanying their young daughter to the toilet at the front of the aircraft when she heard screams and the sound of a struggle coming from the cockpit. She alerted a flight attendant and told her to go to the cockpit to see what was happening.
At that point, the pilot fell out of the cockpit doorway while the co-pilot was still stabbing him.
The injured pilot is Smit Matsar, an Indian national who works in Dubai. It was initially reported that he was an Emirati pilot.
My husband is a pilot.
— Sana Ebrahimi Ledene (@SanaELedene) September 30, 2026
He said pilots have a switch right next to them that unlocks the cockpit door from the inside.
So Captain Smit Machchhar probably didn’t just scream for help. He likely hit that switch before he went down, so the flight attendants and passengers could… https://t.co/p7KPnZR7Ki
Meanwhile, the plane began to plunge steeply towards the ground and passengers were left “floating”, according to the Times of Israel.
This was caused by the high speed and the downward trajectory, which for a few seconds created weightlessness (or at least reduced gravity) in the cabin.
Listen to Yaniv explain to @IsraeliPM the critical moments of the rescue – a remarkable display of Israeli and Emirati courage. 🇮🇱🤝🇦🇪 pic.twitter.com/kd5QAeTRfs
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) September 30, 2026
Initial estimates suggest the Boeing 737 MAX 8 reached the limits of its endurance when it dropped 4,360 metres in half a minute. Passengers are thought to have experienced reduced gravity for 15 to 25 seconds.
Manes took his daughter out of the toilet before heading off to confront the attacker. Two other Israelis went with him. One of them, Yaniv, managed to take hold of the controls and pull the aircraft back up.
Yaniv told Netanyahu: “I pulled the controls back and the plane stopped falling.” He added with a touch of humour: “Luckily, I had some flying experience… from Mayday”, referring to the well-known series about aviation disasters.
It took around 20 to 25 minutes to subdue the attacker. The three Israelis used headphones to tie him up, while a doctor on board stabilised the injured pilot.
“It was like a horror film, and at times we thought we wouldn’t make it out alive,” said Manes, who remembers his daughters screaming, “We don’t want to die”, something he described as traumatic for any father to hear.
“It was a very difficult situation, but because we are Israelis, we reacted quickly,” he told Channel 12.
By coincidence, there were four pilots on the flight in total. Besides the two at the centre of the incident, two others were travelling as passengers.
The Jerusalem Post reports that these two pilots had been placed on the flight because a possible change of route could have lengthened the journey, meaning the original crew would have had to work beyond their permitted duty hours.
“If something happened over Kuwait and you were told to change course, then you add an hour or two to the flight,” explained a source with knowledge of the matter.
According to the Israeli newspaper, their presence had nothing to do with any security warning.
Another passenger, Zvika Menes, told Israel’s Kan News that passengers tied the attacker up “with the crew’s own cable ties and with the headphones from the entertainment system”.
“There are children and families here who have been through an extremely serious and very traumatic event,” he said.
Yasmin Abukasis, the mother of a passenger, said her daughter described a man with a knife who had thrown one of the pilots to the floor, with blood in the cockpit.
“The plane started to lose control. Everyone was screaming, they thought they were going to die,” she said.
Another passenger described the moment it became clear the aircraft was losing altitude as “very stressful”, saying many believed the pilots had lost control.
“There were people here with their shirts covered in blood,” she said.
Information on the first officer
A pilot who spoke to Israel’s Channel 16 said the first officer was an Omani national who had been hired by the airline about eight months earlier.
He claimed the man “prayed excessively throughout the day and refused to shake hands with women”.
These claims are third-party testimony and have not been presented as an official finding on the attacker’s motives.
Trump and his conversation with Netanyahu
President Trump said he spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "at length" about the FlyDubai flight that made an emergency landing in Tabuk after one of the pilots stabbed the other and allegedly attempted to crash the plane.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 30, 2026
Trump relayed the story he heard from… pic.twitter.com/mrqsYJpFA6
Donald Trump also commented on the incident, revealing that he had spoken “at length” with Netanyahu.
“It seems the first officer was perhaps a terrorist, or perhaps someone disturbed, and he stabbed the captain,” he said.
The US president also described the intervention of the Israeli passenger who entered the cockpit, claiming he was a plumber with no flying experience who managed to stabilise the aircraft temporarily.
Trump made clear, however, that he was relaying what he had been told rather than independently confirmed facts.
“That is the story I heard. I don’t know if it’s true, but that is the story Bibi and some early sources relayed to me,” he said.
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