By Alexander Cornwell and Lina Obeid
JERUSALEM, Sept 30 - When flydubai flight FZ1073 suddenly plunged from over 30,000 feet on Wednesday, passenger Almog Italie said it felt like the plane was passing through "massive turbulence" before he realised a life-or-death struggle had unfolded in the cockpit.
Italie described passengers running to the front of the cabin and commotion in front of the cockpit, where Israeli officials said the co-pilot had stabbed the captain to try to crash the plane flying
from Dubai to Tel Aviv with more than 170 Israelis on board.
"It was dropping like for 20, 30 seconds, and then balanced, and then started dropping again, and balanced again, and then we saw that (there) are people in the front, directly (in front of ) the cockpit," he told Reuters. "Crew members and passengers from the front of the airplane took over and got control of the two pilots."
Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, said the wounded captain, bloodied and lying on the floor, had drawn on "the last moments of his energy" to click open the release on the cockpit door.
"At that moment, some of the passengers that realised something was happening raced forward, entered the pilot's cabin. They saw the injured pilot on the ground, and the other … the attacking pilot was standing over the control panel, bashing the control panel," he said.
A passenger subdued the attacker, he said.
A video filmed on board and verified by Reuters captured the aftermath.
In it, two wounded men are seen lying on the floor, both bloodied. A voice speaking in Hebrew off camera says one of them is the pilot "they tried to murder". A voice off camera identifies the other as the attacker, lying on his side with three stripes on his epaulette, indicating that he is a co-pilot.
"We were attacked now, on this airplane, they tried to murder the pilot, and we took control of the team/staff," a man in a black shirt with blood on his face says.
Another man says: "We're standing here, no one is going to pass through the pilot's door."
RESERVE CREW
A reserve flydubai crew that had been on board took control of the plane and landed it safely at Tabuk Airport (TUU), a flydubai spokesperson said.
A playback of the flight posted on flight-tracking website flightradar24 showed the plane cruising at 34,000 feet heading westwards over Saudi Arabia when it dropped more than 14,000 feet in 30 seconds, before veering northwest. It briefly crossed into Jordan, then returned to Saudi airspace and flew to Tabuk.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the attempted attack "was thwarted solely thanks to the heroism of several Israeli passengers who stormed the cockpit, subdued the terrorist, and — with their own hands — restored control of the aircraft to an additional flight crew present on board".
"According to our preliminary information, the terrorist had a single objective: to crash the plane," he said in a statement.
Flydubai said in a statement that the underlying reasons for the event remained unknown and warned against "premature speculation".
Italie said the reserve crew "took over the airplane and balanced it".
"It was quite scary, but not for long. Most of the passengers kept calm and were very supportive to each other. And when then we landed in Saudi Arabia, which we got a very very warm welcome with a lot of medical staff and food and anything we needed, and we're waiting for the flight back to Tel Aviv," he said.
(Additional reporting by Edward James Carron and Marine Delrue, Writing by Tom Perry, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
