A Flight Heading To Israel Had To Do An Emergency Landing. Officials Are Calling It a Hijacking Attempt.

A Flydubai passenger plane heading to Israel had to perform an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after going through an incident that an Israeli official described as an attempted hijacking by one of the pilots.

The official told the Jerusalem Post that a "major disaster was narrowly avoided." Different reports described an altercation between the pilots, which resulted with one of them severely injured. Additional flight crew, along with Israeli passengers, managed to help the subdue the pilot.

The Times of Israel noted that the copilot of the flight, which departed from Dubai, allegedly stabbed the pilot and sought to crash the aircraft, which plunged by more than 10,000 feet in seconds before stabilizing.

A Flydubai spokesperson confirmed the incident, but said the "underlying reasons and motives behind this event remain unknown and are subject to a formal investigation." The spokesperson went on to urge the public to "refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts."

Defense Minister Israel Katz then said in a statement that the incident was a "jihadist terrorist attack attempt."

"The grave incident on the flydubai plane was a jihadist terrorist attack attempt, which was thwarted only thanks to the bravery of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist and, with their own hands, restored control of the plane to another flight crew who was present there," he added. "According to the initial information in our possession, the terrorist had one intention: to crash the plane with all its passengers."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the message, calling the incident "extremely serious." He went on to say he spoke to an Israeli passenger, who told him that "somehow, he managed to break into the cockpit with one of the crew members, and together they managed to stop the pilot while he was attempting to damage the plane's systems."

He went on to say that Saudi authorities are interrogating the suspect and that he instructed the country's security services to take measures to prevent episodes of the kind of taking place in the future.