Dubai-Tel Aviv flight

37 seconds over the Saudi desert

The co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 on September 30 allegedly stabbed its Indian captain—and the jet fell 14,300 feet in 37 seconds, sent emergency and hijack codes, and crossed briefly into Jordan before diverting to Tabuk. This is the flight, minute by minute.

Story and graphics by Binayak Dasgupta
Web development by Pulaha Roy

The co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv allegedly stabbed the captain on Wednesday morning, in what Israeli officials believe was an attempted terror attack. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 fell 14,300 feet over northern Saudi Arabia, sent a hijack alert and diverted to Tabuk, where it landed safely. Flydubai said all passengers were safe.

The captain was Smit Machchhar, an Indian national from Ghatkopar East in Mumbai who was based in Dubai for work, people aware of the matter told HT. He underwent surgery and is stable, they said. Israeli officials told Reuters the attacker was an Omani national, and Saudi authorities arrested him.

In a post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saluted Machchhar's "extraordinary bravery". "Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster," he wrote. According to preliminary information, Machchhar unlocked the cockpit door before he collapsed, the people aware of the matter said. The aircraft broadcasts its position, altitude, speed and transponder code several times a second, and networks of ground receivers record those signals. We reconstructed FZ1073's flight from two of those records, published by Flightradar24 and ADS-B Exchange.

0527 · normal
7700 · emergency
7500 · unlawful interference
no position data
06:05 · 07:05 in Dubai

FZ1073 takes off from Dubai International. Its transponder shows 0527, an ordinary code assigned by air traffic control. It climbs to 32,000 feet and heads north-west up the Gulf.

06:40 – 08:21

For the next hour and 40 minutes the flight is routine. It crosses Saudi Arabia westbound at 34,000 feet and Mach 0.79, the usual cruise for a 737. Tel Aviv is about 420 km ahead.

08:21:08

About 235 km north-east of Tabuk, the aircraft starts to lose height. Within two minutes it has fallen more than 17,000 feet. The descent is charted second by second below.

08:22:13 – 08:31:28

ADS-B Exchange’s receivers lose the aircraft’s position for nine minutes. The map draws no track for that stretch. Flightradar24 kept logging altitude and speed but published no position either.

08:31:28 · 08:35:20

The track resumes about 95 km further north, at 15,000 feet, with the transponder set to 7700, the code for a general emergency. The crew may have set it earlier, while no receiver was picking up the aircraft.

Four minutes later it changes to 7500, which pilots set to tell air traffic control of unlawful interference, in practice a hijacking.

08:41 – 08:45

Still flying north-west at 15,000 feet, the aircraft crosses the Jordanian border at about 08:41. Inside Jordan it turns through almost 180 degrees, and by 08:45 it is back over Saudi territory, heading east.

08:44 – 09:58

Tabuk Airport says it received the distress call at 08:44. The aircraft continues east and then south-east. ADS-B Exchange coverage ends at 08:53, about 300 km north-east of Tabuk.

Flightradar24’s altitude record shows it holding 15,000 feet until at least 09:13 and then descending. It was on the ground at Tabuk by 09:58. Its route for that last hour is not in the public data.

The fall

The altitude record from Flightradar24 shows two separate falls, with a climb in between. The first and larger one is the one that made headlines.

14,300 ftlost in 37 seconds, 08:21:48 to 08:22:25
~425 km/haverage vertical speed over that stretch
598 ktpeak ground speed, 1,107 km/h, at 08:22:36
13,675 ftlowest point before landing, 20,325 ft below cruise
08:20

The aircraft is in level cruise at 34,000 feet with a ground speed of about 413 knots.

08:21:08 – 08:21:48

It begins to sink. Over the next 40 seconds it loses about 775 feet and picks up speed.

08:21:48 – 08:22:25

The next Flightradar24 reading comes 37 seconds later. In that interval the aircraft has fallen from 33,225 feet to 18,925 feet, a drop of 14,300 feet, or about 4,360 metres.

There are no readings in between, so the dashed line joins the two points. The fall could have been faster inside that window, but the data cannot show it.

08:22:36 – 08:22:40

Ground speed peaks at 598 knots, or 1,107 km/h. Four seconds later the descent stops at 16,600 feet.

08:22:40 – 08:23:25

The aircraft climbs more than 5,000 feet in 45 seconds, to 21,725 feet, and slows to about 385 knots.

08:23:25 – 08:31

Then it falls again, to 14,950 feet by 08:24:18, and drifts as low as 13,675 feet at 08:27 before climbing back to 15,000 feet. It stays near that height for the next 40 minutes.

For comparison

An airliner descending at 2,000 feet a minute, a common rate, would take about seven minutes to lose 14,300 feet. The grey line shows that pace from the same starting point.

Key readings as a table
Saudi timeAltitude (ft)Ground speed (kt)SquawkSource
08:20:5634,0004130527FR24
08:21:4833,2253870527FR24
08:22:2518,9255020527FR24
08:22:3616,850598—FR24
08:22:4016,600593—FR24
08:23:2521,725386—FR24
08:24:1814,950479—FR24
08:27:0513,675311—FR24
08:31:2815,025—7700ADS-B Exchange
08:35:2015,2503127500ADS-B Exchange
08:53:3315,0252917500ADS-B Exchange

A dash in the squawk column means neither source recorded a code at that moment. ADS-B Exchange received no messages from the aircraft between 08:22:13 and 08:31:28.

What the data does not settle

How fast it was flying. Early reports said the aircraft approached the speed of sound. For the dive itself the public data has ground speed only. The last Mach reading the aircraft transmitted, at 08:21:42, was 0.82. The winds it reported before and after the dive blew against it or across its path. At cruise its true airspeed was about 470 knots against a ground speed of about 414, so its airspeed during the dive was probably no lower than the 598 knots Flightradar24 logged. In a standard atmosphere the speed of sound at 17,000 feet is about 620 knots, so the reports are consistent with the data. The exact figure will come from the flight data recorder.

How long the fall took. Initial accounts put the 14,000-foot drop at under 30 seconds. Flightradar24’s readings bracket it at 37 seconds, with nothing in between.

The tail. Unverified photographs of the aircraft at Tabuk show the rudder missing from the vertical stabiliser. That kind of damage can occur when control surfaces are moved too hard at high speed. Neither the airline nor investigators have commented on the photographs.

The cause. Officials have not disclosed what happened on board or why the crew diverted.

The response

Israeli Transport Minister Miriam Regev held a situation assessment with the agencies involved, and the government said security officials were handling the incident. A transport ministry spokesperson said Emirati authorities were working to bring home the Israeli passengers stranded in Saudi Arabia. The Prime Minister’s Office said “all measures are currently being deployed in order to return the Israeli passengers safely to Israel.”

Flydubai said its teams were working with the relevant authorities on next steps. Its 737 MAX 8s generally seat about 174 people.

Passengers arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport after the flydubai flight's emergency landing in Saudi Arabia
Passengers who experienced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, during a flight on FlyDubai plane, arrive at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

The route

Flydubai, the sister carrier of Emirates, began daily flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv in late 2020 and now runs 70 a week, according to its website. The UAE has become a popular holiday destination for Israelis.

Hijackings of airliners have become rare over the past few decades as governments adopted international security protocols. Israel imposed some of the strictest flight security in the world after a series of attempted and successful hijackings in the 1970s.