WHAT’S HAPPENING
On Wednesday morning, a flight carrying 174 passengers from Dubai to Tel Aviv nearly succumbed to a terrorist hijacking.
An Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain multiple times and seized the controls, sending the plane into a near-vertical dive. Israeli passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit, subdued the attacker, and two off-duty pilots onboard landed the aircraft safely.
THE FACTS
The FlyDubai flight dropped nearly 20,000 feet in just 12 minutes after the co-pilot attacked the captain and seized the controls.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated that the attacker's intention was a “jihadist terrorist attack” meant to "crash the plane with all its passengers."
The Omani co-pilot joined FlyDubai just eight months ago and was known to be a fundamentalist Muslim, praying throughout the day and refusing to shake hands with women.
Four Israeli passengers sitting near the front heard screaming, saw blood, and rushed to the cockpit to overpower the attacker while the aircraft was in a steep dive.
Despite being stabbed in the cockpit, Captain Smit Machchhar fought back and unlocked the door, letting passengers and crew stop the attack.
Two off-duty FlyDubai pilots took over and landed the plane in Saudi Arabia, while an Israeli doctor treated the severely wounded captain
The plane approached Mach 1, yet the tail somehow stayed intact, when normally at those speeds it would have been ripped clean off.
Between 1968 and 1976, Palestinian groups hijacked 16 airplanes and carried out additional attacks on Israeli aviation targets. This is the first hijacking attempt on an Israel-bound flight in over 20 years.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan became a national hero after commanding the 1976 Entebbe operation, in which Israeli commandos rescued 102 hostages from a hijacked Air France flight.
OUR TAKE
There are almost too many shocking details here to absorb at once. First, it's inconceivable that a radicalized Muslim wasn't just cleared to pilot international flights, but was somehow flying a plane full of Israelis into Israel.
And yet the bravery of the passengers who stormed the cockpit to fight off the terrorist is remarkable. By an incredible stroke of luck, or perhaps Providence, two off-duty pilots happened to be aboard and landed the plane safely, a plane that somehow kept its tail intact despite reaching speeds that should have torn it off.
All 174 people on that flight survived, when this easily could have been the deadliest hijacking since 9/11.
