By: Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz – Israel365 News; Israel365News.com
Ninety minutes out of Dubai, somewhere over Jordan, the cockpit of a flydubai jet carrying 174 passengers to Tel Aviv erupted into violence. The Boeing 737 sent a hijacking alert, Israeli fighter jets scrambled, and the plane turned back and landed in Saudi Arabia, a country with no diplomatic relations with Israel. Among the passengers were 27 children.
Israeli officials say the two pilots got into a physical fight. One passenger described something more frightening. Yasmin Abu Kasis told Reuters that her daughter Miriam, who was aboard, heard screaming and saw a man with a knife put the pilot on the floor, with blood everywhere.
In the middle of Chol HaMoed Sukkot, the intermediate days of the Feast of Tabernacles, Israeli families spent a tense morning waiting for news of loved ones who had come down in the one country Israelis least expect to land.
Fighter jets scrambled
Flydubai Flight FZ1073 left Dubai at 7:05 a.m. Wednesday and was due at Ben Gurion Airport around 9:30. About 90 minutes into the flight, as it entered Jordanian airspace, the plane transmitted squawk code 7700, the international signal for a general emergency. Minutes later, it switched to 7500, the code for unlawful interference, commonly used to signal a hijacking. The jet made a U-turn back into Saudi airspace, dropped to a lower altitude, sent the general emergency signal again, and landed at Tabuk airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia, according to the tracking site Flightradar24.
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https://israel365news.com/421510/blood-in-the-cockpit-israel-bound-flight-lands-in-saudi-arabia