Flydubai passenger: 'We all thought we were going to die'

Uri Pintov was flying home from Thailand with his wife and three children when flydubai flight FZ1073 suddenly plunged toward the desert. Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief, Zvika Klein, filling in this week for host Jacob Laznik, investigates further. Sitting in row 9, just behind business class, Pintov describes being pinned to the cabin floor during the dive, then helping restrain the attacker with airline headphones and carrying oxygen to the badly wounded captain. "We all realized we were going to die," he says. For 90 minutes after that, the Israeli passengers didn't know where the plane was going or whom to trust, so they posted a guard on every crew member until the aircraft landed in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. He also explains why so many families hesitated to board flydubai's replacement plane, and what he wants from Israeli officials now. In the second half, Jerusalem Post senior Middle East analyst Seth J. Frantzman takes on the bigger questions. He looks at why reserve pilots were on board, how emergency codes work, and how a pilot reportedly dismissed by Oman Air could end up in a flydubai cockpit. He also warns against learning "the wrong lesson" from the attack. Frantzman calls flydubai "one of the crown jewels of the Abraham Accords," explains why Saudi Arabia would not let Israeli aircraft collect the passengers, and gives a frank assessment of what stands in the way of Saudi-Israeli normalization.