A FlyDubai flight carrying dozens of Israelis from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after an apparent attempted midair hijacking. A violent fight broke out between the plane's two pilots shortly after takeoff, and Israel scrambled fighter jets because it feared terrorists had taken over the aircraft.

The plane, FlyDubai flight 1073, sent an emergency alert soon after leaving Dubai, according to public flight-tracking data. The same data showed the jet dropping more than 17,000 feet in two minutes at around 8:21 a.m. local time. The crew brought it down in Tabuk, where the civilian airport sits beside a Saudi military base. Israeli media, citing security officials, reported that everyone on board was safe.

The Jerusalem Post reported that one of the pilots tried to hijack the plane before crew members and passengers subdued him. Israeli sources told the Post the would-be hijacker was an Omani national, though neither Israeli nor Saudi officials had confirmed those details. An unnamed Israeli official told the paper that a "major disaster was narrowly avoided."

One witness told the Post that one pilot stabbed the other and tried to force him out of the cockpit as the plane began to plummet. A group of Israeli passengers seated near the front charged the attacker as the aircraft lost altitude. According to the witness, those passengers yelled at two off-duty pilots in the back of the plane "to run and take control." Once the passengers had pulled the attacker out of the cockpit, one of the off-duty pilots took the controls.

A female passenger gave Israel Hayom a similar account, saying that one pilot suffered a stab wound during the brawl and that Israeli passengers jumped in to stop the fight. "There are people here with shirts covered in blood," she told the outlet, calling the whole ordeal "very stressful." Videos posted to social media showed two men on the floor with blood on and around them.

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Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on the flight, spoke with reporters at Ben Gurion Airport, where the plane had been scheduled to land. She said her daughter heard a pilot calling for help. "The plane start to lose control. So all the people, they scream," Abukasis said.

A regional official briefed on the incident told the Associated Press a fight broke out in the cockpit apparently involving the pilots, but the official did not say what had caused the altercation. The AP cited a second official confirming that Israel had scrambled warplanes, fearing a possible hijacking of the plane carrying dozens of Israeli citizens.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned in recent days of unspecified, escalating security threats to Israel and its interests amid its ongoing operations against Iran-allied Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Netanyahu's office later said the situation was under control and that Israel was working to bring the passengers home.

By Wednesday afternoon, a recovery flight was en route to Tabuk to pick up the passengers.

“The naive notion that our enemies value life and that we should have mercy on them received another reminder this morning in the form of a terrorist who planned to crash a plane and murder the 180 Israelis on board,” Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir wrote in a post on X. “Terrorism is a devil with which no agreement should ever be reached except for its defeat and erasure from the face of the earth.”