Israel was prepared to shoot down flydubai flight FZ 1073 during last Wednesday's suspected hijacking attempt, despite 166 Israeli passengers being aboard the aircraft, two Israeli sources with direct knowledge of the incident told CBS News on Monday.
The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was approaching Israel when the co-pilot attacked the captain in the cockpit and attempted to crash the aircraft.
After the aircraft plunged 14,000 feet, the Israel Air Force attempted to contact the cockpit but received no response, CBS News reported. Israeli authorities activated a long-established procedure for dealing with a potentially hostile civilian aircraft, convening a predetermined committee and establishing a command center.
Israel scrambled fighter jets and closed its airspace; jets were later recalled after authorities determined that the aircraft, while about 400 miles from Israel, had turned toward Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia then scrambled its own fighter jets.
The captain managed to fight off the co-pilot long enough to unlock the cockpit door, allowing Israeli passengers and flydubai staff to overpower the alleged attacker. Two off-duty pilots traveling aboard the flight then took control of the aircraft and made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Passengers were later brought back to Israel on a flydubai rescue flight that landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday evening.
Israel's protocol for a suspected hijacking
Had flight 1073 continued toward Israel and reached a predetermined distance, Israeli fighter jets would have entered Jordanian airspace to investigate the aircraft, the two sources told CBS News.
The fighter pilots would have flown as close as possible to the passenger plane, attempting to visually inspect the cockpit and establish contact with the pilot. They would then examine the cabin from the air for signs of panic or other indications that control of the aircraft had been seized.
Their assessment would have been relayed to the Air Force and the committee overseeing the incident, the sources said.
If authorities concluded that the aircraft had been hijacked, while those controlling it continued to maintain radio silence and made no demands, the defense minister and prime minister would have been brought into the decision-making process to make the final call.