TEL AVIV — A stabbing, an emergency alert, a terrifying midair plunge.
Details are still emerging after an Israel-bound flight carrying 180 people emitted a distress signal Wednesday, raising fears of a possible hijacking when one pilot stabbed the other in the cockpit.
Aviatar Alevi, who was on the Flydubai flight Wednesday, described people “screaming, running, panicking, blood.”
“At the start, I thought it was a plane malfunction, but then I started hearing screaming about the stabbings,” Alevi, 17, told NBC News. “Then I understood the weight of the actual situation.”
“We didn’t know what was going to happen,” he said, adding that the possibility of death “was definitely an option.”
The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, one of its rudders damaged, apparently by the force of its descent.
The passengers, who had been flying from Dubai, were mobbed by media and flag-waving fellow Israelis afterthey finally arrived at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.
They said they feared for their lives after the plane plunged more than 14,000 feet in 29 secondsat one point,according to FlightRadar24.
“Imagine sitting on the plane, all scared after you fell down five kilometers. You don’t understand anything,” 16-year-old Peleg Itali told NBC News.
Capt. Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was recovering in a hospital in Saudi Arabia on Thursdayas the other pilot, so far identified only as an Omani citizen, was being interrogated elsewhere in the country. Machchhar was widely praised for his efforts to prevent the plane from crashing, opening the cockpit door and allowing passengers and crewmembers to rush in.
Machchhar and the pilot who initiated the attack were transferred to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on Thursday, the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry said in a statement, citing an unnamed “official source” at the ministry.
“The source indicated that initial investigations conducted by the competent authorities in the Kingdom, with the participation of a security team from the sisterly United Arab Emirates, revealed an assault on the pilot by his co-pilot, resulting in both sustaining various injuries,” the ministry said. “The source confirmed that the pilot and his co-pilot, after their health improved and the medical team cleared them, departed the Kingdom for Abu Dhabi this morning.”
Few details had emerged about the pilot Thursday morning. Questions about a possible motive, including whether it was terrorism-related, hang over the attack.
“I don’t think it was a hijacking. It looks like a suicide attempt, simply because of what this hero, Yaniv, has described,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on “CBS Evening News” as he praised Yaniv Hayun, who rushed into the cockpit and subdued the attacker.
Hayun, who was pictured with his shirt spattered with blood sitting next to Netanyahu, said he confronted the pilot who initiated the attack, according to the Israeli government press office.
“I grabbed the attacker and choked him, pulled him out first,” Hayun said. “I started pulling the controls.”
“Thank God, we pulled it off. We really put our heads together and worked as a team,” Hayun said, adding: “It was between fear and a sense of a do-or-die situation.”
“We had to win. We had to pull through and come out on top,” he said. Hayun told Netanyahu that he acted based on what he had seen on a TV show and helped stabilize the plane.
Flydubai said on-duty crewmembers on the flight were able to land the plane.
Netanyahu said it was still too early to determine why the pilot apparentlystabbed his colleague and appeared to try to take over the Flydubai flight and whether Iran was involved.
“We’ve had signs that Iran, in particular through its proxies, was intending to heighten terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli nationals abroad,” he said. “But I think it’s too early to say whether there was Iranian collusion here.”
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz branded the incident a “jihadist terrorist attack attempt,” without expanding on how he had reached that conclusion.
President Donald Trump also weighed in, calling it“an incredible story.”
“It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job, and he stabbed the pilot,” Trump told reporters.
On Thursday, Trump told reporters at the White House that the pilot who initiated the attack could be linked to Iran.
“I would say the answer, based on what I’m hearing, is yes. But we’re working on it right now,” he said.
Asked whether the pilot could have been radicalized or working with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Trump replied, “Could have been, yeah.”
Trump also told reporters Thursday that there would be renewed strikes against Iran if it was behind the attack.
“Oh, they’ll be hit very hard, don’t worry,” he said.
“You just ask them,” he added. “They know what happened. They’ll be hit very hard.”
All the passengers were Israeli, according to Netanyahu’s office. Four were dual American-Israeli citizens, two U.S. officials told NBC News.
With few details about the suspect or any potential motive surrounding the incident, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office, said there was a “strong opinion” that the incident was a terrorist attack, “but we can’t be sure until we debrief everybody.”
An investigation by Saudi authorities is ongoing, David Mencer, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, said separately.
A senior U.S. official and a Saudi official who were both briefed on the Israeli investigation said the stabbing increasingly looked like an act of terrorism based on early findings.
The United Arab Emirates’ attorney general, Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, separately ordered an investigation.
His office said the probe would seek to “gather information and evidence, establish the facts and circumstances of the incident, and determine the underlying motives,” in addition to examining “whether the incident was linked to any terrorist activity or purpose, or involved any prior planning or direction.”
Hessa Alyahya, spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in the U.S., said authorities were waiting to determine whether the attack was a dispute between the pilots or whether it was an act sponsored by Iran or the Houthis.
Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have official diplomatic relations.
