{"id":407,"date":"2026-09-30T20:04:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T20:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=407"},"modified":"2026-09-30T20:04:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T20:04:25","slug":"flydubai-fz1073-cockpit-stabbing-emergency-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"COCKPIT STABBING SENDS FLYDUBAI PLANE INTO A 17,000-FOOT PLUNGE! | Passengers and spare crew stop FZ1073 over Saudi Arabia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Dubai-to-Tel Aviv jet just became the morning\u2019s nightmare headline. Flydubai flight <strong>FZ1073<\/strong>, a Boeing 737 Max, made an emergency landing Wednesday in <strong>Tabuk, Saudi Arabia<\/strong> after what the airline called an altercation on the flight deck \u2014 and after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one pilot stabbed the other and \u201capparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24 showed the aircraft dropping from about <strong>33,000\u201334,000 feet to 17,000 feet<\/strong> in roughly a minute, circling near the Jordanian border, and transmitting emergency \u2014 and briefly hijack \u2014 squawk codes before landing around <strong>9:45 a.m.<\/strong> local time. Tabuk Airport said both captain and co-pilot were injured and hospitalized. Flydubai said <strong>all passengers were safe<\/strong> and later flew them on to Tel Aviv on a replacement aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>Passenger accounts describe chaos: screams, a dive, then people forcing their way into the cockpit. Haaretz quoted passenger Dalia Shpigel saying \u201cthree to five guys burst into the cockpit.\u201d Flydubai said the jet was \u201csuccessfully secured by on-duty flydubai crew travelling on the flight.\u201d Netanyahu named the attacked captain as Indian pilot <strong>Smit Machchhar<\/strong> and said the alleged assailant was arrested by Saudi authorities. The airline and UAE aviation authorities urge against premature conclusions on motive \u2014 a formal investigation is underway, including black boxes.<\/p>\n<p>Photos after landing showed damage to the aircraft\u2019s rudder. Israel\u2019s Mossad and Shin Bet are involved in inquiries, a source told The National. The route itself is a post-normalization workhorse: flydubai has ramped Dubai\u2013Tel Aviv service to about <strong>70 weekly flights<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/sep\/30\/whoever-is-hearing-me-we-need-help-how-flight-1073-survived-its-5000-metre-plunge\">The Guardian<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenationalnews.com\/news\/gulf\/2026\/09\/30\/uaes-civil-aviation-authority-investigates-security-incident-on-flydubai-flight\/\">The National<\/a>; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Top_News\/World-News\/2026\/09\/30\/Saudi-Arabia-FlyDubai-pilot-fight-forces-emergency-landing\/4161790755851\/\">UPI<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Passengers and spare crew stop FZ1073 over Saudi Arabia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bb-flydubai-fz1073-0930.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugleblast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}