6 days ago
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A flight to Tel Aviv was forced to divert on Wednesday morning after suddenly dropping more than 15,000 feet.
FlyDubai Flight 1073 took off from Dubai just after 7 a.m. local time and was scheduled to land at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport about three hours later.
Around two hours into the flight, the Boeing 737 Max dropped sharply from its cruising altitude of 34,000 feet, descending to roughly 17,000 feet above sea level.
10 minutes later, the airplane squawked 7700, an internationally recognized code for general emergencies during flights.
It then changed the code to 7500, which indicates "unlawful interference" with the flight, and is the code used by pilots to indicate attempted hijackings.
It later reverted to the more general 7700 code after diverting toward Tabuk, a city in northern Saudi Arabia, about 270 miles from Tel Aviv.
The plane landed in Tabuk at 8.44 a.m. local time.
The exact nature of the incident remains unclear, but Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, said in a post on X that there was "a terrorist who planned to crash the plane and murder the 180 Israelis on board."
"Following concerns over an aviation incident, Prime Minister Netanyahu held consultations on the matter and is monitoring developments," the Israeli prime minister's office said in a statement.
"The incident is under control, and all measures are currently being deployed in order to return the Israeli passengers safely to Israel."
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Pete Syme is an aviation reporter for Business Insider, based in London.He writes about all things related to the industry, from aviation safety and CEO interviews to route reveals and airplane tours. Pete also uses data for industry analyses and to visualize breaking news events.Before joining Business Insider in 2022, he graduated with an MA in Newspaper Journalism from City, University of London, and a BA in English from the University of Exeter.
Will Martin is a senior business editor with 10 years of experience in various roles at Business Insider. He works with a team of reporters and editors to cover everything business, with a special focus on consulting, financial markets, and the aviation industry.Prior to working on the business news team, Will led Insider's sports coverage in the company's London bureau, publishing award-nominated work on alleged gang involvement in elite boxing, deeply-reported features on a civil war in Olympic sport modern pentathlon, and profiles of some of the biggest rising-stars in soccer.Before joining the sports team, Will spent a year as an associate editor on Insider's global news team. Before that, Will worked as a markets and economics reporter for Business Insider for more than three years.During his time with the news team, Will assigned and edited reporting and features on everything from the Boeing 737 Max crisis, to the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, to global geopolitics, and even a Barack Obama-themed service station in Ireland.He also personally reported on allegations of illegal mass human organ harvesting in China.Prior to working for Insider, Will earned a BA in International Relations from the University of Exeter and an MA in Financial Journalism from City, University of London.
