I posted this in the Aviation thread, but I think it deserves a thread of its own.
A FlyDubai flight took off from the UAE early this morning on its way to Tel Aviv, and as it approached Jordanian airspace, it sent out a hijacking emergency alert, went into a dive, levelled out close to ground, and managed to land successfully in a Saudi airport. Israel scrambled fighter jets to intercept the plane as soon as they got the alert. What we know so far is this:
As the plane approached Israel, the co-pilot, an Omani national, stabbed the pilot with a blade.
The plane went into a nosedive, dropping 14,000 ft. in 30 seconds and tearing off part of the plane’s tail.
Passengers and possibly staff managed get into the cockpit and overpower the co-pilot. How they got past the locked cockpit door is not known at this time.
A pair of off-duty pilots who were on the plane took control and landed it safely in a nearby Saudi airport.
Besides the original cabin crew, there were no major injuries that we know of. The passengers are safe and sound in Saudi.
Oh, I didn’t see your thread and posted a duplicate. Absolutely insane, thank God for the heroic passengers and flight crew that subdued the terrorist pilot.
Many of the post 9/11 safety precautions seem to make it much harder to stop a hostile or dangerously insane pilot (wasn’t there a guy who tried to crash a plane into a mountain supposedly after taking mushrooms and having them trigger a psychotic episode?)
My understanding is that he never should have been approved to pilot a flight to Israel because he is from Oman and Oman has no diplomatic relationship with Israel. I imagine this will be quite a scandal…
Flights between Israel and Dubai have only been happening since 2020 so this could be a major diplomatic setback.
It sounds like after stabbing the copilot the terrorist pilot tried to force him out of the cockpit but passengers got in before he could close the door.
To quote some relevant commentary from LSLGuy in the other thread:
Even scarier. So even though they stopped the terrorist pilot the plane was very close to unflyable? What a tragedy that would be - stopping the hijacker only to find the plane too badly damaged to land… Very glad this didn’t happen.
If it is a UAE-flagged vessel, is it not up to the UAE to approve who is allowed to crew it? And the airline, of course? What does Israel have to do with it?
If he’s flying into Israel, he needs to show a passport that Israel recognizes, and since Israel and Oman have no diplomatic relationship, that doesn’t work.
That was a jump-seating pilot on drugs who, in the end, wasn’t knowingly trying to harm anyone.
A better example would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525. The first officer locked the pilot out of the cockpit when he left to use the lavatory, then crashed the plane. The post 9/11 cockpit door lock certainly helped him in that effort, I think it’s fair to say. I hate when security procedures end up backfiring.
I certainly do not know Israeli regulations or practices. But as a general comment about international airline ops …
Many airline flights involve an airplane flying from their home country to nearby Country X, then right back to the home country. In which case the crew generally stays aboard and never encounters the local officialdom. No passport checks, no nothing.
Now company policy requires, or ought to require, that the crew have whatever paperwork, passports, visas, whatever, that the host country requires. So that if the airplane breaks down, part of the crew doesn’t get interned or summarily deported rather than being allowed in to go to a hotel.
I am a US citizen carrying a US passport. As are the vast majority of my co-workers before I retired. I used to fly in and back out of Cuba, with whom the US doesn’t have dip relations, 2-3 times per month. Year in and year out. My former employer does this 10-20 times per day to one Cuban city or another. As do many other US-based carriers with predominantly US-passported crew.
Yes, the Cuban authorities would’ve have had a minor fit if I went into the terminal or tried to go through immigration. But as long as I stayed on the jet, everything was cool.
Reminders of 9/11 and specifically United Airlines Flight 93. The passengers fought the terrorists and took control of the plane. Sadly it crashed afterwards.
Thankfully there were relief pilots on board this flight. They were able to land the plane.
Wow. How very fortunate that a passenger* knew how to fly that plane, and was able to jump into a cockpit seat and pull the plane out of its plunge – without overstressing it (besides the rudder damage) – and then land it.
*Whatever their training or day job, in this instance they were a passenger.
From what I’ve read, the aviation agreement between Israel and the UAE stipulates that any foreign national pilots flying to Israel require Israeli approval.
In the NY Times: (I know your Cuba story wasn’t about a plane in distress)
The two nations don’t have formal diplomatic, trade or tourism ties, though attempts to forge them have been central to U.S. regional diplomacy in recent years.
Still, their proximity has taken Israelis to Saudi Arabia under exceptional circumstances.
The 1944 Convention on International Civil Aviation, known as the Chicago Convention, laid the foundation for how global civil aviation is governed. It states that all parties to the agreement, which include Israel and Saudi Arabia, should assist aircraft in distress in their territory.
After Wednesday’s emergency landing at the Tabuk airport, a civil-military facility in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the Saudi authorities said that they would provide “necessary care” to passengers. Their statement did not mention the flight’s connection to Israel. The FlyDubai aircraft had been flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
There have been certain, e.g., Pakistani passports which literally say stuff like “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel”, and yet people who managed to obtain a visa have been able to enter Israel because Israel does not decide who is or is not going to enter based on Pakistani law. This is all at best tangentially relevant and only in the case the person in question was actually going to enter Israel proper rather than stay on board the jet, modulo additional agreements between the UAE, Israel, and perhaps Saudi Arabia that @Alessan alluded to.