Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, September 30, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
US President Donald Trump says he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the apparent attempt to hijack and crash a flydubai flight full of Israelis and that it seems the copilot “was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job.”
Trump says he was told by Netanyahu and others about how “an Israeli plumber, never flew a plane… saw what was happening,” tackled the suspect — “ripped this guy out of his seat” and then “took the stick, lifted it up, and leveled out the plane before it crashed.”
“I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got from Bibi and from a couple of other people,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office, referring to the heroics of Yaniv Hayun.
“When I asked how he did that,” Trump says, Netanyahu explained that the heroic plumber “watches that show Air Disasters.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Yaniv Hayun, one of the Israelis who helped subdue a flydubai copilot who allegedly sought to hijack and crash a plane full of Israelis, on the passengers’ return to Ben Gurion Airport on September 30, 2026. (Screenshot/KAN)
“They said [the copilot] wanted to crash the plane, but they don’t have that kind of [definitive] information,” he adds.
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From the Liveblog of
Thursday, October 1, 2026
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