Passengers laud ‘heroism’ of Israelis who subdued flydubai flight attacker, as videos show moments of fear

Passengers on Wednesday described the horrifying moment when their flydubai flight dived thousands of feet during an alleged attempt by a copilot to crash the plane, and the heroic effort of passengers who managed to subdue the suspected attacker and prevent a disaster reminiscent of the September 11 attacks.

Some of the 180-odd passengers on the commercial flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv told Hebrew media outlets that the flight’s copilot had stabbed the captain, at which point the plane lost control and dived 17,000 feet in under a minute.

Two off-duty pilots reportedly took the reins after the copilot, an Omani national, had been incapacitated by Israeli passengers who managed to enter the cockpit. The airline said that the motives behind the incident were still being investigated.

Tzvika Manes, CEO of Bank Leumi’s underwriting arm Barak Leumi, was one of the passengers who subdued the copilot.

“My younger daughter was in the bathroom, and my wife heard sounds in the cockpit,” he told the Kan public broadcaster. “Another team member entered the cockpit and saw the stabbing and threw him out. Three of us jumped on him with all our strength and tied him up with the multimedia headphones; that’s how we subdued him.”

Videos taken by passengers aboard the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv showed the moments after the plane took the rapid plunge.

Footage taken by a passenger aboard the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv after the plane took a rapid plunge. pic.twitter.com/O3vd5644pL

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 30, 2026

Another video clip taken by a passenger aboard the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv shows the plane taking a rapid plunge.

According to flight tracking data, the plane dropped more than 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. pic.twitter.com/wtiqBYhEw1

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) September 30, 2026

In another dramatic and graphic video from the plane, the captain was seen covered in blood on the floor of the aircraft, outside the cockpit, as passengers tended to him. A second crewmember was seen tied up beside him, seemingly unconscious.

Passengers were heard telling others nearby that “it’s good for you” while they were filming. “You saved the plane. It’s good for you.”

Video shows passengers tending to an injured pilot, moments after a suspected attempt to crash a flydubai plane en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, September 30, 2026.

One Israeli passenger told the person filming: “We were attacked and were guarding the pilot.”

Another passenger said: “They tried to murder the pilot. We subdued [the attacker].

Someone pointed to the bound man and said: “This is the man who… stabbed him.”

‘September 11 is happening again’

A passenger identified as Daniel also shared his experiences on the flydubai plane with Channel 12 news.

“Suddenly I heard a struggle. Something like a fight coming from the cockpit,” he said, on the phone from Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport, where the plane made an emergency landing. “The door was slightly ajar, and I saw an attempt to push someone out. Then three Israelis who were sitting behind me came to see what was happening, and the plane suddenly went into a very steep dive, nose down, with a very intense spin.

“From what I understood, a copilot stabbed the captain, and once they subdued the attacker, there were two other pilots on the plane, and they took control,” he said.

“The spinning stopped. It took some — I don’t know, it felt like an eternity, but I think it was two minutes, at least two or three minutes, during which the plane was simply diving and spinning like crazy,” Daniel recounted. “It felt like, that’s it. It’s over. September 11 is happening again.”

Made with Claude using Flightradar24 data. pic.twitter.com/PBgp8EO7d1

— Joshua Davidovich (@Josh_Davidovich) September 30, 2026

Daniel said he “definitely” thought it was a terrorist attack. “I heard the screams during the struggle and saw the blood on the floor from the pilot, who was brought out.”

“Those three Israeli guys are real heroes. It’s hard to explain just how heroic they were,” he said.

But Daniel said that at the time it was not clear at all that the danger had passed.

“The focus was on neutralizing the guy, the attacker. I looked outside and saw desert; I couldn’t see anything. I realized Iran was close. Thoughts went through my head that they were hijacking the plane to Iran,” he said.

yasnivDaniel said the two other pilots who took control initially did not communicate with the passengers, as they were apparently focused on securing the plane.

“The pilots locked themselves in the cockpit, and we had no contact with the pilots,” he recalled. “There were also two flight attendants who were completely helpless, from flydubai. They were hysterical; they didn’t really know how to handle the situation.”

He added: “All kinds of thoughts were running through our heads, but the moment we heard the pilot start speaking to the passengers and telling them that they were going to land, we calmed down.”

Another unnamed passenger on the flydubai plane described how passengers prayed for their lives.

“We heard screams on the plane. Then they opened the cockpit and we saw blood, and someone had stabbed the pilot with a pocketknife,” the unnamed woman told the network via text message.

The woman said Israeli passengers helped restrain an attacker along with members of the crew. “We prayed, ‘Shema Yisrael,’” she said, referring to the prayer Jews have traditionally invoked before death.  “There were also moments when we thought we weren’t going to make it out alive.”

Another woman, identifying herself as Noam, told the network in a call: “Screams began on the plane… by passengers who realized what was happening. We understand that one of the pilots was stabbed and seriously wounded, and they lost control of the plane. It started to dive quickly. It was very scary.”

Passenger Hila Gayer told Kan radio that her daughter had gone to the restroom “when suddenly the plane dived.”

“You feel like you’re in a crazy air pocket, like you’re descending and there’s terrible screaming. Crazy screaming, and you don’t understand what’s happening,” she said.

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “pretty much out of control” during the altercation.

“So the copilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.

“It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the copilot and neutralized him,” she said.

“There was also a doctor who gave first aid, and people who treated both of them. Other than the pilot, there were no injuries, but the bigger fear was really a crash, which is exactly what he was trying to do.”

Earlier, Yasmin Abukasis, Ohayon’s mother, told AFP her daughter called her from Saudi Arabia: “She said one pilot tried to kill the other pilot with a knife. They heard shouting”.

Another passenger went to the cockpit “and saw a lot of blood. She started screaming ‘come help,’ and some people went in and caught the guy,” she added. “All the while, the plane started going down very fast. People thought they were going to die.”

Asaf and Ofir Shani, who were seated almost all the way in the back of the flydubai plane, told Channel 12 that the flight attendants offered little assistance during the incident.

The flydubai flight attendants were foreigners and provided almost no instructions to passengers as the plane began spinning out of control, the Shanis said.

Ofir Shani told Channel 12 that the intercom didn’t seem to work.

She said that the flight attendants at one point began walking down the aisles, trying to assure passengers that the flight was going to land in Tel Aviv, even though it wasn’t — an emergency landing was made in Tabuk.

Ofir Shani also said that the flight attendants appeared no less panicked than the passengers as the incident unfolded.

It was like “we were having very big turbulence, but there was no turbulence,” passenger Almog Italie told AFP, describing the sensation of losing thousands of feet of altitude in seconds as similar to riding a “rollercoaster.”

But there was no “hysteria” among passengers, Italie noted, even as fighting erupted near the cockpit for control over the aircraft.

“The other passengers from the front took over control,” he told AFP via video call from Tabuk.

Still, Italie said, “people kept calm.”

Also appearing on Channel 12, he said that passengers were being treated well by Saudi staff at Tabuk Airport.

“They’re performing in the best way,” he said. “They’re taking care of us. At the moment, we’re relying on them.”

“In Saudi Arabia, we trust!” he added with a smile, in English.

Hours after the incident, the passengers in Saudi Arabia took off for a 45-minute flight with flydubai to Israel. Some passengers expressed discomfort with flying the same airline back to Israel, delaying the flight, a passenger told Channel 12.