Saudi Arabia turned down a request by Israel to allow its planes to bring back Israeli passengers from a flydubai flight that made an emergency landing in the kingdom, two security sources said on Wednesday.
The request was made to allow Israeli military planes to bring back Israelis from Saudi Arabia, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel, the sources said.
Saudi Arabia’s government media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The passengers were set to continue their journey on flydubai aircraft, the airline said.
The co-pilot of a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv tried to crash the plane after stabbing the pilot, but passengers then held him down while other pilots landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing for Saudi Arabia to join the US-brokered Abraham Accords under which several Arab states established ties with Israel. The kingdom has long rejected joining the accords without a pathway toward Palestinian statehood.
A senior Saudi official on Wednesday denied reports of a meeting between Saudi and Israeli officials.
WHAT HAPPENED EARLIER?
A flydubai flight traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv was forced to divert to Saudi Arabia after an incident in the cockpit. According to an Israeli official, the pilots became involved in a physical altercation mid-flight. The aircraft ultimately landed at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia, where airport authorities said both pilots were hospitalized after sustaining injuries.
An Israeli official had earlier told Reuters the plane transmitted emergency signals after the pilots got into a physical altercation with each other. The aircraft’s data appeared to show that it had suddenly and rapidly descended by nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before a first emergency signal was sent, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
Around the time the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told Reuters the incident was not believed to have been a hijacking, describing it as a “different incident”.
