Israel was prepared to shoot down a Flydubai passenger jet carrying more than 170 people — most of them Israelis — if authorities concluded the aircraft had been hijacked and was being turned into a weapon, CBS News reports. The revelation adds a chilling new dimension to the mid-air attack aboard Flydubai Flight 1073, the Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight whose co-pilot allegedly tried to crash the plane into Israel.
Israel scrambled fighter jets as the plane lost contact
According to the CBS report, the crisis began after the plane's Omani co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain and the aircraft plunged thousands of feet. A hijacking signal was transmitted, and repeated attempts to contact the cockpit went unanswered. Israel closed its airspace and scrambled fighter jets as the situation unfolded.
Israeli sources told CBS that if the aircraft had continued approaching, fighters would have intercepted it before any shootdown decision reached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. An Israeli official told the network the co-pilot allegedly said he intended to crash the jet into Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. The plane never entered Israeli airspace — it was diverted and landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where the co-pilot was detained.
Attack was planned before he joined the airline, officials say
Two Israeli officials told Reuters the co-pilot had planned the attack before he was hired by Flydubai, deliberately applying to the Dubai airline after searching for carriers that fly to Tel Aviv. The officials said he had operated an earlier Flydubai flight to Tel Aviv this year and allegedly intended to hijack and crash that aircraft too — but abandoned the plan, reportedly because he knew someone onboard.
Investigators have also established a troubling trail of missed warnings: Oman had previously banned him from flying over radicalization concerns, and Royal Air Maroc rejected his job application in 2025 after three months of theoretical training. Australian counterterrorism investigators are examining his time as a student at RMIT University in Melbourne, and New Zealand police are looking into a period he spent in the country.
Hero captain and a security reckoning
The wounded captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, managed to open the cockpit door despite his injuries, allowing passengers and crew to overpower the suspect while a reserve Flydubai pilot traveling in the cabin took control and landed the aircraft. The UAE has called the attack a terrorist act, and Israel's Shin Bet security agency has joined the UAE-led investigation.
Netanyahu has ordered a security review of foreign airlines flying to Israel, saying pilots who are citizens of countries with no diplomatic relations with Israel — like Oman — are not permitted to operate flights there, and it remains unclear how the co-pilot was assigned to the Tel Aviv route. Flydubai has cautioned against premature speculation while the probe continues.
The takeaway: Israel came closer to an unthinkable decision — shooting down a civilian airliner full of its own citizens — than anyone knew, and the attack's premeditation is forcing a hard look at how a flagged pilot ended up in the cockpit of a Tel Aviv-bound flight.
Watch: TOI reports on Israel's readiness to intercept the Flydubai jet carrying 170 people
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