Israel was prepared to respond to FlyDubai Flight 1073 with an established protocol that could include fighter jets shooting the aircraft down, according to Israeli sources cited by CBS News and NDTV. The preparation follows an incident in which the plane’s captain is attacked in the cockpit.
CBS News reports that Israel scrambled jets and was ready to carry out the plan in the minutes after the situation escalated on board. One CBS account says the co-pilot, identified as Hamam al-Hammami, planned to crash the plane into Israel’s main airport. NDTV says the protocol would be triggered only under strict authority, with sources indicating that the prime minister would have had to approve any shoot-down decision.
Additional detail cited by the Jerusalem Post indicates that if the flight continued toward Israel and reached a predetermined point, jets would first move into Jordanian airspace to investigate the aircraft. Across outlets, the common focus is Israel’s readiness to implement a contingency response if the aircraft posed a direct threat, with differing emphasis on who could authorize the action and the geographic steps involved.
