CBS News learned about Israel's readiness to shoot down flydubai plane

Israel was prepared to shoot down a flydubai plane after the attack on the pilot, despite the fact that more than 150 Israeli citizens were on board to prevent a larger terrorist attack, CBS News reported, citing two Israeli sources.

According to the interlocutors of the channel, Israel has long worked out the procedure for actions in case of events like the September 11 attacks.

After the plane plunged 14,000 feet, the Israeli Air Force tried to contact the cockpit but received no response. A special commission was promptly convened and a command post was deployed. Fighters were scrambled and airspace was closed. However, the planes were eventually recalled when it was revealed that about 400 miles from Israel, the liner turned towards Saudi Arabia, and the Saudi side flew its own fighters.

The commander of the aircraft managed to repel the attacking co-pilot and held out to open the door to the cockpit. Then a group of Israeli passengers and flydubai employees neutralized the attacker, and two pilots on board, who were not in duty at the time, took control of the aircraft and made an emergency landing in the city of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia.

According to the sources, if flydubai had approached a certain distance, Israel would have sent fighter jets into Jordanian airspace to assess the situation. In this case, Israeli fighter pilots would get as close to the plane as possible to inspect the cockpit and try to establish visual contact with the pilot. Then they would have to assess the condition of the passengers and, in case of panic, transmit the information received to the Air Force Command and the special commission. In the event of the hijacking, the commission would contact the defense minister and the prime minister.

The protocol prescribes shooting down a plane moving towards Israel in the event of a threat, but only the prime minister can make such a decision. According to the interlocutors, the destruction of the passenger liner would be considered a lesser evil compared to the death of hundreds of people in the event of a collision with the Azrieli towers (a shopping center in Tel Aviv), an airport or other facility of strategic importance.

The co-pilot, questioned in the UAE, said he had planned the attack before he even started working for flydubai. He wanted to crash a plane at Ben-Gurion Airport. According to CBS News sources, according to a preliminary Israeli investigation, he attempted the attack alone.

Media outlets, including ABC News and CNN, named the attacker as Hamam al-Hammami.

According to the UAE Prosecutor General’s Office, the co-pilot attacked a colleague in the cockpit using an emergency axe and tried to seize control of the aircraft. The agency called the incident an attempted terrorist attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker had undergone “radical Islamist treatment” and was prone to suicide.

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that "an Israeli plumber who has never flown on a plane pulled this guy out of a chair and threw him back, grabbed the helm, lifted him up and leveled the plane just before the crash." Trump said he heard from Netanyahu and several others.