A passenger on the FlyDubai flight where a clash in the cockpit set off fears of a hijacking Wednesday morning described chaos on board and said that she and others on the plane had thought that it might crash.

The passenger, Miriam Ohayon, spoke to an Israeli television station in one of the first detailed witness accounts to emerge from the plane.

Passengers felt the jet lose control, Ms. Ohayon told Israel’s Channel 24, but some of them intervened to take control. The plane, Flight 1073, which was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, landed safely in Saudi Arabia.

“We heard screams on the plane, and when they opened the cockpit, there was a lot of blood,” she said.

Ms. Ohayon’s mother, Yasmin Ohayon, told The New York Times that a woman sitting next to her daughter was among the first to realize something was wrong. The woman saw people fighting inside the cockpit as she was returning from the bathroom and alerted other passengers, Yasmin Ohayon said at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, where families were gathering to wait for the passengers.

“Within a few minutes, our plane completely lost control, and we felt that this was it — we were about to crash,” the younger Ms. Ohayon said, adding that she began reciting a Jewish prayer often said in times of distress.

“I’ve already lost my brother; I can’t do this to my mother,” she said she thought. Her brother, Evyatar Ohayon-Abuksis, a soldier, was killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel.

She said that passengers had subdued the attacker and that a nurse and doctor on board provided initial medical care to the pilot.

Asked how the passengers had stopped the attacker, Ms. Ohayon said, “I believe with their bare hands inside the cockpit.”

David M. Halbfinger is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. He also held that post from 2017 to 2021. He was the politics editor from 2021 to 2025.

Natan Odenheimer is a Times reporter in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.

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