Passengers on the flydubai flight 1073 still believed they were being flown to Iran even after the terrorist co-pilot had been restrained and the craft stabilized.

The incident unfolded Wednesday as a fight broke out in the cockpit of the flydubai airplane carrying about 180 Israeli passengers. The alleged hijacker, Hamam al-Hammami, who was a co-pilot, tried to take control of the Boeing 737 MAX, managing to push the aircraft into a nosedive of 14,000 feet in just one minute. Passengers rushed the cockpit, which had been opened by Indian pilot Smit Machchhar just before he lost consciousness, and subdued the potential hijacker. The plane was diverted to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where both pilots, who sustained wounds in the cockpit fight, were taken to a hospital for treatment. Video footage shows that a passenger was wounded and bleeding as well.

The Mossad is taking the lead in the probe, and the transportation minister has requested a freeze on flights between Israel and the United Arab Emirates while the investigation is ongoing.

Questions remain regarding how a pilot of Omani origin was going to land a plane in Israel. According to the bilateral agreements that Israel has with other countries, only pilots from states that have diplomatic ties with Israel can land planes in the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, it has been determined that the co-pilot had planned a terror attack on the scale of 9/11, intending to take over the aircraft and crash it into the heavily congested Ben Gurion airport, with the potential for thousands of fatalities.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, a passenger on the flight, Uri Pintov, described the experience as “10 minutes of horror.” He had boarded the flight with his wife Michelle and three children after a vacation in Thailand, but he said that the passengers “did not trust” the crew, including the pilots who took over the flight and locked themselves in the cockpit.

Doubts were running through his mind during the ordeal.

“What was the co-pilot’s plan? Was he planning to crash us into Ben-Gurion? Did he want to hijack the plane and bring us to Yemen or Iran? I felt like I was held hostage for an hour and a half,” he said.

“It was an hour and a half where we didn’t know where we were going, where they were taking us. We didn’t trust anyone, so we separated the crew and put them in different places on the plane,” he added, saying that it wasn’t until just 10 minutes before landing that the rescuers finally spoke to the passengers.

“It was so fast, and once they got into the cockpit, they locked the door, and no one could go in. It could have been that they had their hands full, but they said nothing to us,” Uri said.

“As we were landing, I forced the crew member sitting next to me to tell me where we were, and then I understood it was Saudi Arabia. But we still didn’t know what their intentions were … if we were going to be hostages or not once we landed. We were ready for whatever was coming.”

Pintov’s wife Michelle described the terror of those moments.

“I remember more screaming, and I was seeing my own death, our deaths. It wasn’t even a question. I remember looking at my son Daniel, who is only 10 years old, and he was in shock with his eyes closed. My daughter Emma was sitting near the window and looked at me, terrified. Mia was sitting next to the window, and I saw her sending a voice note to her boyfriend saying goodbye. I took my phone too and left a message for my mother that I loved her,” she said.

“I felt that I couldn’t say bye to my kids. I couldn’t say it out loud to the kids,” Michelle added.

Pintov said that the passengers feared getting on another flydubai airplane, blaming the Transportation Ministry for its failure to vet the Omani co-pilot.

“People were terrified of boarding the rescue plane,” Pintov said.

“It was surreal that we had to go on another flydubai plane,” he said. “How did they think we were going to board the flight?”

“I am still shocked that no one in Israel was able to check the crew of the rescue flight and let us know it was safe to board that plane.  Doing checks on pilots flying into Israel isn’t something new, but the Transportation Ministry did not do their job. This is a lawsuit,” he added.