NYT (“Plane to Israel Narrowly Averts Disaster After Pilot Stabbing“):

One pilot stabbed another at the controls of an Emirati flight to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, causing it to suddenly plunge thousands of feet until passengers and the crew won a fight to regain control of the plane.

Passengers described a terrifying fall during the attack, which ended when some of them stepped into the melee and managed to subdue the aggressive pilot. Overhead bins swung open, parents clung to their children, and videos from inside the plane showed at least one wounded man and others on board covered in blood.

Crew members and passengers made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, the Israeli prime minister said, and all of the passengers arrived safely in Israel by Wednesday night, after a replacement aircraft was sent to retrieve them by FlyDubai, the airline operating the original flight. As they disembarked, they shared harrowing stories of what happened on board.

A dentist, Shota Musayev, said he was one of the first to reach the cockpit after the attack, finding the injured pilot thrown to the ground there. He said he treated him in midair, including for severe wounds to his head and cuts on his fingers.

Those in the cabin recalled fear racing through them. “In my head, I said, ‘I’m so screwed, I’m so screwed. I don’t deserve to die like this,’” said Peleg Itali, 16, a high school student who was on the plane.

And Asaf Rajuan, one of the passengers who raced to the cockpit, said he and five others “acted on instinct” to restrain the attacker as they realized the plane was out of control.

The plane nose-dived for what felt like 10 to 15 seconds, he said, adding that the passengers’ only hope of rescuing the plane was to work together. Without his fellow passengers, he said, “we’d never have survived.”

One of two other pilots who had been sitting in the row in front of him managed to stabilize the plane, he said, and the pair later landed the aircraft in Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that one pilot had stabbed the other and “apparently attempted to crash the plane with its passengers on board,” nearly all of them Israelis.

He called the pilot who was stabbed, whom he identified as Capt. Smit Machchhar, a hero who saved the lives of 174 people.

“Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic midair disaster,” he said.

Jerusalem Post (“Flydubai pilot attempts terror hijacking of flight to Tel Aviv, foiled by Israeli passengers”):

One hundred and seventy-four Israeli passengers were returned to Ben-Gurion Airport Tuesday evening after a stunning series of events in which multiple passengers helped restrain an Omani hijacker-pilot who attempted to crash the airplane earlier in the day.

The passengers were initially on a flydubai commercial passenger aircraft flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, but then the pilot-hijacker, who was the deputy pilot for the flight, stabbed the lead pilot and tried to crash the aircraft before as many as four passengers wounded him and tied him up.

An additional flight crew on board were then able to handle landing the plane in Saudi Arabia, though the original pilot, a native of India, was in critical condition, having been stabbed repeatedly by the Omani pilot.

[…]

Some of the passengers who managed to restore control of the plane credited the Indian pilot for opening the cockpit for them even after he had been stabbed, so that they could provide assistance.

[…]

After around six hours in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, a second flydubai aircraft, with a new staff, specially approved by the Mossad, came through Saudi Arabia and flew the Israeli passengers back to Israel.

Part of the delay came due to a refusal by the Saudis to allow an Israeli air force or commercial El Al aircraft, that would have arrived earlier, to bring them back to the Jewish state, with Riyadh fearing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would use the event as an election and normalization prop.

There was even a proposal for an aircraft to arrive without markings, but ultimately the Saudis said no.

A source close to the Saudi royal family told The Jerusalem Post that “Israel needs to understand that normalization cannot be forced.”

Another delay came when many Israeli passengers initially refused to get on the new flydubai aircraft, insisting they would only leave Saudi Arabia on an Israeli aircraft.

Eventually, they gave in on the issue when told this was their only choice for being rescued.

So far, multiple sources have told the Post that the Mossad, Shin Bet, IDF, and Transportation Ministry believe the hijacker was a lone wolf, not under orders from Iran or another terror group.

There is a partial disconnect in the investigation since the Saudis are leading the interrogation of the hijacker, with Israel receiving information from Riyadh secondhand or from passengers who spoke with the hijacker after he was subdued.

A number of failures are being probed by the joint Israeli security team, including why the Omani pilot was not properly checked for weapons possession, since he had a weapon with him in the cockpit with which to stab his co-pilot.

The Saudis are also probing how the United Arab Emirates allowed an Omani citizen to pilot an aircraft flying to Israel, given explicit agreements between the countries that this would not occur.

[…]

Further, they are probing what the Omani pilot’s full intentions were: whether to crash the plane nowhere specific with the focus on killing the passengers or whether he had hoped to crash it in an urban setting in Israel to achieve “bonus” additional Israeli casualties.

[…]

As the incident unfolded, the Israel Air Force (IAF) scrambled fighter jets in preparation for a possible emergency and raised its alert level.

Israeli airspace was also temporarily closed and later reopened after the plane landed in Saudi Arabia.

There are more questions than answers at this point. Thankfully, the stabbed pilot kept his wits about him and was able to get the door open. That several passengers swarmed the hijacker is to be expected given the urgency.

For Americans, especially, it’s impossible not to connect the dots to the 9/11 attacks and Todd Beamer and company aboard Flight 93. Thankfully, the Israeli passengers were able to land safely, apparently owing to the happenstance of another qualified pilot being on the plane.