Pilot Stabbing Raises Aviation Security Questions, Further Unsettles a Region Shaken by US-Iran War

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — This week’s attack on a pilot by a co-pilot who tried to crash a Tel Aviv-bound flight left the region’s travel industry in crisis Friday, raising questions about aviation security and further unsettling a Middle East already shaken by the U.S.-Iran war.

Nothing is publicly known about the motive of the co-pilot, who came close to crashing the aircraft and killing all 182 people aboard Wednesday’s FlyDubai flight from Dubai. A regional investigation is underway.

The UAE has canceled all flights to Israel, complicating travel for hundreds of passengers who fly between the countries on a typical day. Israel and the UAE agreed on repatriation flights, beginning Friday, to bring back passengers stranded in the UAE after commercial travel between the two countries was suspended, according to an Israeli official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But it was unclear late Friday whether they had begun. Earlier, the national carrier El Al said the UAE was holding up the necessary landing permits to allow it to fly into Dubai.

The Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv listed carriers Arkia and Israir with flights scheduled to arrive from Dubai late Friday and early Saturday. El Al was expected to fly passengers from Dubai to Israel on Sunday.

Dubai has been a popular destination for Israelis since Israel and the UAE established ties in 2020 as part of the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords to normalize ties between Israel and Arab countries.

Trump says he’ll hit Iran ‘very hard’ if it had a hand in the attack

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his claim on Friday that the co-pilot, identified by Israeli officials as an Omani citizen, had undergone “Islamist radicalization” but provided no evidence to back the assertion.

“We are now investigating whether he was sent, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price,” Netanyahu said in a video message.

U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that early information he’s received suggests links between the attack and Tehran but did not elaborate. Trump also said that if it is determined that Iranian agents were behind the attack, the United States will “hit them very hard.”

Israeli investigators are involved in the probe but the Emiratis are in the lead, according to an official who wasn’t authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. It’s unclear if the attacker was part of a group, said the official, adding that there is currently no evidence of a link with Iran.

UAE senior diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash on Friday called the FlyDubai attack a “dangerous terrorist act” in a post on X. He credited the flight captain for preventing a catastrophe.

The moment is a test for the UAE government, which has burnished a reputation for building effective measures against extremist activities but has also bristled in the past over criticism of security lapses.

“The Emiratis are going to be interested in protecting their reputation,” said Jon Alterman, chair of Global Security and Geostrategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They believe people should see them as a place that’s very secure, not a place that has serious lapses.”

The FlyDubai flight plummeted to 15,000 feet

Details of the harrowing flight, which made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, continue to emerge.

Smit Machchhar, the wounded captain who has been hailed as one of the heroes of the flight, and the co-pilot were transferred on Thursday from Saudi Arabia to the UAE, the kingdom said.

Machchhar is recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital. He spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a televised video call Friday, describing the terror he faced after being attacked in the closed cockpit.

“I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,” he said, his head bandaged, as he broke into sobs. “I was fighting for my life. At one point, I realized that if I didn’t get up … then passengers would lose their lives.”

The first signs of trouble came more than two hours into the flight when the aircraft suddenly dropped to 16,600 feet — the sharpest altitude drop recorded by data tracking platforms. But moments before the nosedive, passengers seated near the front of the plane heard sounds of a fight inside the cockpit, said passenger Daniel Schlichter, who was seated in the second row.

Seconds later, it ascended to 21,725 feet before soon dropping back to 15,000 feet, which it maintained until safely landing more than an hour later.

“The plane started going down very quickly and we all went back backwards, like the gravity took us backwards,” Schlichter said. The shouting of the children as the plane plummeted, he added, was “horrific.”

“One of the things that I will never forget is the shouting of the children,” Schlichter said. “I could hear the children shouting, ‘We don’t want to die! We don’t want to die!’ ”

The captain managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter and restrain the attacker as the Boeing 737 — with 174 passengers and eight crew members, most of them Israelis — descended sharply.

The passengers wrestled the co-pilot from the cockpit and onto the floor of the main cabin where they bound his hands with headphones. They laid the wounded pilot inches from him, and a dentist attended to his wounds. Schlichter and the dentist, Dr. Shota Musayev, both said there was no visible knife or other weapon at the front of the aircraft.

“I could see all the blood on the floor, and I couldn’t believe he would still be alive because he had so many injuries,” Schlichter said of the captain.

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Madhani reported from Jerusalem. AP writers Sally Abou AlJoud in Brussels, Sam Metz in Ramallah, West Bank, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed reporting.