Passengers on the FlyDubai plane — which was carrying 174 people, mostly Israelis, from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv — have described how the bloodied Indian captain managed to open the cockpit door to let them in before they grappled with the copilot and stabilized a descent so sharp that the plane’s rudder was torn away.
“We felt helpless, suspended in midair, and I didn’t know who to turn to. But it was all instinct to survive,” Asaf Rajuan, who was among those who intervened, said in a statement shared by Israel’s presidency.
A regional official briefed on the investigation said the suspect, an Omani citizen, was under arrest and confirmed that Saudi authorities were working with countries, including Israel, to try to determine a motive. He said the UAE, the United States and Oman also were involved.
“All possible scenarios, from terrorism to mental disorders, are being looked into. Nothing is ruled out for now,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing probe.
Israeli intelligence and security officials were in Saudi Arabia to help investigate the copilot, according to another regional official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Israel has requested that the copilot be sent to Israel for the investigation, though it is unclear if that request will be granted, the official said.
Video shot inside the plane by Shota Musayev, a dentist who treated the captain, shows the copilot on his knees, with his hands tied behind his back. The copilot’s name has not been released, and his condition was not known.
Capt. Smit Machchhar, widely praised as one of the heroes of the flight, was reportedly in stable condition, the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia said overnight.
In the chaos that began about two and a half hours after takeoff, the flight descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet in about a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and landing in Tabuk, according to Flightradar24. The site identified the aircraft as a Boeing 737 Max 8.
FlyDubai said crew members on board helped secure the plane but released no details about them.
The head of the New Zealand flight school where the Indian captain trained, Philip Kean, called it “miraculous in the way that the airplane was never, ever kind of designed for that sort of dive and survive that, the airplane actually didn’t break up completely.”
Trump praised the U.S.-based Boeing for producing a plane “that was able to withstand G Forces and Strain far beyond what it was designed.”
During the frantic search for a place to land, a person who heard the flight’s communications with air traffic control described the plane being turned away by Saudi Arabia and Jordan before eventually landing in Tabuk in Saudi Arabia while passengers screamed in the background. The pilot’s voice was trembling as he called “mayday” and said a hijacking was taking place.
The air traffic controllers gave no reason for the refusals. The person who heard the communications spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
