Tel Aviv flight passengers recount harrowing moments during mid-air attack
Passengers aboard FlyDubai Flight 1073 expressed fear, anger and ultimately elation after they survived what Israeli officials said was an attempted terror attack thousands of feet in the air on Wednesday.
After the passengers, many of whom were Israeli citizens, returned to Tel Aviv following the ordeal, many said they were still bewildered over what transpired during their flight from Dubai.
The plane's first officer allegedly stabbed the plane’s captain and then made the plane descend rapidly, Israeli officials said, with passengers saying they felt the impact almost immediately.
"I guess usually there's like some turbulence and you feel like whoa, but then it like evens out pretty quickly, and here it wasn't like that," Mika Bauman, who was aboard the flight told ABC News. "It was...like chaos screaming and just the crazy drop. Like you look at the ground and you're like, 'OK, I'm going that way right now.'"
Another passenger, who identified herself as Miram, told Israeli media that things got scary when passengers heard the screams coming from the cockpit and saw the bloody pilot.
"We felt like we were, like, going to crash. I was already screaming [the Jewish prayer] 'Shema Israel' and saying, 'I can't die, I'm my only daughter, I can't do this to my mother,' the woman added.
Israeli officials said that some of the passengers worked together to subdue the suspect while another flight crew member was able to take back the plane.
"Here was a crazy man with a knife who stabbed one of the pilots. We jumped and helped the pilot. Friends, everything is OK now, as you can see we are landing in Saudi Arabia, you can see I am fine. That’s it," passenger Itzhak Liber said in a Hebrew language selfie video posted to Facebook after the incident was over.
The jet was diverted to Saudi Arabia, where the injured pilot was taken to the hospital and the passengers were repatriated later in the day. The unidentified suspect remains in custody and the investigation is ongoing.
When the repatriation flight landed in Tel Aviv later, the passengers arrived to a warm welcome.
"It feels amazing in that it'll probably take me a little while to get on the plane again. But I'm honestly just thanking God that I'm here right now because it was so close to not happening based on the whole situation that we were just in," Bauman said after she landed in Israel.
