The plane dropped 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. Passengers on FlyDubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv were two hours into a calm flight on September 30 when the co-pilot — an Omani national — pulled a knife on Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian pilot, and stabbed him in the cockpit. The instrument panel went dark. The aircraft plunged toward the Saudi desert with 174 people on board, more than 100 of them Israeli.

Machchhar, bleeding from his wounds, managed to open the cockpit door.

What happened next is the part the airline doesn't want to talk about. A passenger named Yaniv Hayun, a plumber, rushed into the cockpit, put the attacker in a chokehold, and dragged him out. Three other passengers helped restrain the co-pilot with an earphone cord and plastic zip ties. The aircraft diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where the attacker was arrested.

The co-pilot, whose name has not been publicly released, screamed "Kill me. Kill me" as passengers held him down. Netanyahu, who met with Hayun and other passengers afterward, did not mince around the motive. The co-pilot had undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination," he said. "It's clear he was suicidal. He was going to down that plane."

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz was more direct: "According to the preliminary information available to us, the terrorist had one intention: to crash the aircraft with everyone on board."

FlyDubai's response was to suspend flights to Israel and issue a statement warning against "premature speculation" about the underlying reasons for the event. The airline — a sister carrier to Emirates — did not use the word "terrorism." Neither did most of the international press coverage in the first 24 hours. A man with a knife tried to crash a commercial aircraft full of Israelis into the ground, and the corporate communications team would like everyone to keep an open mind.

The co-pilot refused to shake hands with women. He prayed frequently enough that colleagues noticed. He held citizenship in Oman, a country that maintains no formal diplomatic relations with Israel. Netanyahu said intelligence indicated the man had been radicalized. Saudi authorities are conducting the interrogation. The UAE says it is "investigating" whether the violence was linked to terrorism — a question that apparently requires more study than the knife, the 14,000-foot nosedive, and the screaming about martyrdom.

President Trump called the incident an "amazing story" and suggested the co-pilot may be linked to Iran, though he did not provide specifics. That connection remains unconfirmed. What is confirmed is the sequence of events: an Omani co-pilot on a commercial flight to Tel Aviv attempted to kill every person on board, and the only reason 174 people are alive is that an Indian captain kept his head after being stabbed and an Israeli plumber decided to do something about it.

Netanyahu saluted the passengers: "I salute the heroes who showed extraordinary bravery and, according to the passenger's account, saved many lives."

Commercial flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv exist because of the Abraham Accords — the normalization agreements Trump brokered in his first term that the foreign policy establishment said would never work. Those flights became a symbol of a new Middle East, one where Israeli tourists could fly direct to the UAE and back. Flight FZ1073 was one of those symbols. Someone tried to turn it into a weapon.

The transponder told the story in two codes. First 7700 — general emergency. Then 7500 — unlawful interference. The plane that was supposed to represent peace between Israel and the Gulf states transmitted a hijacking signal over Saudi airspace while a plumber from Israel wrestled a radicalized co-pilot in the aisle.

Passenger Haim Lazarovich described the drop: "The plane was falling down... it was very, very terrifying." Another passenger, Almog Italie, recalled seeing a "riot" at the front of the aircraft as people rushed forward. A replacement aircraft transported the passengers to Tel Aviv the same evening.

FlyDubai would like to avoid premature speculation. Netanyahu called it Islamist radical indoctrination. The co-pilot screamed for his own death at 30,000 feet with a knife in his hand.

One of those descriptions requires further investigation. The other two don't.