TEL AVIV, October 4. /TASS/. The co-pilot of the Flydubai flight said during the interrogation that he had planned to direct the hijacked aircraft to Tel Aviv and steer it into Ben Gurion Airport’s terminal, Israeli Channel 12 reported, citing unnamed sources.

According to the television channel, he said this, explaining why he had attacked the aircraft’s captain, Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, when the plane was flying over Jordan near Israel’s border. The co-pilot he said he had planned to approach to land in Israel "routinely," and at the very last moment, when it would have been impossible to intercept the aircraft, to divert it and crash it into the terminal. It was only thanks to the actions of Machchar, who, despite his injuries, managed to open the cockpit door, that the co-pilot’s plan was thwarted, the television channel noted.

On September 30, a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing at Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport following a security incident. On October 1, the Saudi Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the incident was caused by the stabbing of the flight captain by his co-pilot which left the two of them with injuries of varying severity.

Both pilots departed for Abu Dhabi with an Emirati security escort once their condition had stabilized, while the other six crew members had earlier safely returned to Dubai, the Saudi ministry specified. The UAE continues to look into the reasons and circumstances behind the incident, including operational aspects of it and safety measures.