Flydubai flight FZ 1073 took off as usual from Dubai International on Wednesday morning at 6.49am local time for Tel Aviv, one of more than two dozen daily flights between the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
By the end of the day, it would become known around the world for a disaster that was only just averted.
None of this could have been known to the 174 passengers, the vast majority of whom were Israelis, who showed up a few hours early for the rigorous security checks usually required for flights into and out of their country.
The passengers would have come from all over: travellers making a connection from Asia, tourists finishing holidays at Dubai’s resorts and businesspeople used to making the three-hour journey between the two countries.
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The first two-and-a-half hours of the flight were unremarkable, according to passengers’ testimony and flight-tracking websites, with the plane skirting over the blue waters of the Gulf before cruising westward at 34,000ft over the barren yellow expanse of the Saudi desert. All was on track for a 9am arrival in Tel Aviv.
And then a commotion began.
“We heard screaming, people running, panicking,” Evyatar HaLevy, a 17-year-old passenger, told the FT. “It felt terrible ... We were so scared.”
“I heard what sounded like a struggle coming from the cockpit,” Yaniv Hayoun, a passenger seated near the front of the plane, later relayed to Israeli media.
The plane began a precipitous descent, nose down, plummeting by 18,000ft within the space of 90 seconds, according to Flightradar24. Over the next 11 minutes, it climbed, dived and climbed again.
The aircraft’s ground speed, measured in nautical miles per hour or knots, shot from 400 to more than 600, well above normal cruising speed, ricocheting around for minutes as the battle for control of the cockpit continued.
In the back, passengers screamed and the roughly 30 children on board wailed.
“We were plummeting down,” HaLevy said. He said he had believed that “death was definitely an option”.
“‘We’re so screwed’, I said, ‘I’m going to die’,” Peleg Italie (17) recalled exclaiming “after the plane nosedived”.
“My God, my God, my God,” one woman yelled in a video later posted to social media. A father, crouching in the seat, tried to calm his children, his inflection growing more panicked. “Everything is OK, it’s just an air pocket. An air pocket. An air pocket, everything is OK,” he said.
At 8.31am Israeli time, amid the chaos, the plane issued a 7700 “general emergency” alert – often used for engine failure or a medical emergency – to air traffic control.
Four minutes later, it changed its code to the 7500 “unlawful interference”, an extremely rare signal that can indicate a hijacking.
The pilot was telling authorities he had lost control.
Inside the cockpit, a co-pilot had stabbed the pilot with a knife, kicking off a deadly struggle over the fate of the plane. Israel later claimed that the attacker was an Omani national, though his motive remains unclear.
One quick-witted Israeli passenger, Tzvika Manes, and a crew member rushed through the door before the attacker could crash the plane.
Manes would later tell Israeli media it took some 20 to 30 minutes of struggle, with the help of at least a few more passengers, to remove the co-pilot and bind him with headphone cords.
“Three passengers threw themselves on the [co-pilot] and captured him,” Dan Zoller, who was on the aircraft with his wife, son and daughter, told the FT. “And then there was another pilot [who subsequently flew] the plane. I think he was British.”
Assaf Rajuan, one of the passengers who helped subdue the attacker, told the FT that “we did it instinctively”.
“It wasn’t a long fight ... The issue was to control him, to neutralise him,” Rajuan added.
Itzik Lieber, another passenger, said in a video message uploaded to social media: “We just jumped in and removed him from the cockpit.”
“The [co-pilot] was neutralised and the pilot was seriously injured,” he added.
Video posted online from a passenger named Shota Musaev just outside the cockpit showed a gruesome scene.
The purported attacker, tied and bloodied, lay on the floor with an oxygen mask on his face being tended to by two Flydubai crew members.
The pilot, bare-chested and bloodied, his head on several pillows, stared into the camera.
“No sleep,” Musaev told him, clutching his hand. “You want sleep? No.”
Hayoun, red blood stains on his white shirt, can be seen standing guard outside the cockpit. “No one is passing through this door,” he said, after a third Flydubai pilot had taken control and stabilised the plane.
The jet steadied at about 15,000ft, half the altitude at which continental flights typically operate. At that height, aircraft and their details are clearly visible from the ground with the naked eye.
Still within Saudi airspace, the plane sped along the border with Jordan, remarkably still heading northwest in the direction of Israel.
“We didn’t know where we could land and that was very worrying; under us it was only desert,” Rajuan recalled. “We didn’t know who to trust. I was very scared for my life and my family’s life.”
At 8.40am Israeli time, it entered Jordan, before abruptly turning around and re-entering Saudi airspace six minutes later towards an emergency landing at Tabuk airport.
“Guys, we’re landing,” Rajuan yelled to the rest of the passengers, fist aloft. “We won! The nation of Israel lives!”
As the plane touched ground in Saudi Arabia, its rudder heavily damaged, the entire flight clapped their hands and cheered, breaking out into traditional Jewish song.
“And the main thing is – not to be afraid at all,” passengers sang in Hebrew.
[ UAE investigates if attack was 'terrorist activity'Opens in new window ]
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