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A plane flying from Tel Aviv to Vienna was forced to make an emergency landing in Sofia on Sunday evening after a bomb threat.
Bulgarian state television reported the diversion, which saw the aircraft come down in the capital.
The broadcaster BNT said the threat was made against the flight, which was carrying 51 passengers and six crew members. It cited a statement from the transportation ministry in its reporting.
According to BNT, a crew member on board reported receiving the threat. An air force fighter jet then escorted the plane until it landed.
Bulgaria‘s defense ministry said fighter jets responded after the threat was reported on the Airbus A320.
The airline operating the flight has not been identified.
The incident follows increase tension on flights to and from Israel after an apparent attempted hijack last month.
The flydubai aircraft, flight FZ1073, was in Saudi airspace when the co-pilot attacked the captain with a crash axe, typically kept in the cockpit for emergency use, according to reports.
The captain has since described blocking axe blows to the head and screaming for help as he reached for a knob to open the cockpit door.
Captain Smit Machchhar has been hailed as a hero for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, helping to thwart what the UAE attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who intended to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport.
Speaking in an interview with The National newspaper from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, his head and left arm bandaged, Machchhar said that when the first blow landed, he thought something had gone “horribly wrong the aircraft structure”, before quickly realising he was being attacked and things had “taken a drastic turn”.
“The next thought was I need to get help in here,” he said in the interview published on Saturday.
“My immediate action was to free myself from the seat belts and I tried to just block the blows as much as I could,” he said, pointing to his arm that was wounded as he defended himself. “The blows were coming on the head.”
“Immediately my hand went to the knob which opens the door and screaming for my colleagues, screaming his name.”
“I believe that was the first time when I lost my consciousness.”
The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were on board landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect, an Omani national, was transferred to the UAE, flydubai’s home country.
Machchhar said he heard the cockpit door opening and screaming “between my colleague and the guy”.
He said the scariest thing he felt was the aircraft nose “steeply going down.”
