Cockpit stabbing on FlyDubai plane to Tel Aviv puts crew-related hijackings in focus

NEW YORK (AP) — A pilot on a plane traveling from Dubai to Tel Aviv stabbed the other pilot and then apparently tried to crash the aircraft Wednesday before being subdued by passengers and crew.

The Boeing 737 made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, where the unnamed pilot was detained, but not before an abrupt descent prompted Israel to scramble warplanes over concerns of a possible hijacking.

Here are some past examples of plane hijackings and attempted hijackings potentially involving pilots or crew members:

An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot tried to cut the engines of a Horizon Air jet traveling from Everett, Washington, to San Francisco while riding in an extra seat in the cockpit. The plane was diverted and landed in Portland with more than 80 people. Joseph Emerson told police he was despondent over a friend’s recent death, had taken psychedelic mushrooms and hadn’t slept in days.

A China Eastern Airlines flight from Kunming in southwest China to Guangzhou, near Hong Kong, slammed into a mountain, killing all 132 people aboard. Chinese authorities have yet to release their final investigative report, but data released by American investigators earlier this year suggests the jet's engines were deliberately shut off and there was a cockpit struggle before the plane nose-dived.

The co-pilot on a Germanwings jet traveling from Barcelona, Spain, to Duesseldorf, Germany, locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. Andreas Lubitz had struggled with depression and suffered from sleeplessness and fear of losing his vision.

The co-pilot on an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Milan, Italy, hijacked the jet and rerouted it to Geneva, Switzerland. Hailemedhin Abera Tegegn, the co-pilot, surrendered to local police and sought political asylum. None of the 193 passengers were harmed.

The pilot of a Mozambique Airlines plane traveling from the southern African nation to Angola deliberately downed the jet in a national park in Namibia, killing all 33 people on board. Authorities said at the time that Herminio dos Santos Fernandes, the pilot, locked the cockpit door and set the plane on course to crash when the co-pilot went to the bathroom.

An EgyptAir flight from Los Angeles to Cairo plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 passengers and crew on board. American investigators concluded the copilot, Gameel Al-Batouti, set the plane on course to crash while the captain was in the bathroom. He then shut off the engines as the captain returned and struggled to right the plane. Egyptian authorities, however, disputed the findings, concluding in their own investigation that mechanical failure was to blame.

A SilkAir flight from Jakarta to Singapore crashed near the Indonesian town of Palembang, killing all 104 people on board. Indonesian investigators concluded that “unlawful interference” likely caused the crash of the new model Boeing jet in good weather. Their report found the pilot, Tsu Way Ming, “was in the process of, or intending to, leave the cockpit” before the cockpit voice recorder cut out. Authorities also said the pilot was “facing financial problems, and had experienced several company disciplinary actions," including a demotion.

A pilot crashed a Royal Air Maroc flight from Agadir, Morocco, to Casablanca into the Atlas Mountains just 10 minutes after takeoff, killing all 44 people on board. Investigators determined Younes Khayati switched off the autopilot and sent the plane hurtling to the ground as the co-pilot tried in vain to intervene. The Associated Press reported at the time that it was “the deliberate wish of the pilot to end his life.” A union representing pilots disputed the findings.

An off-duty FedEx flight engineer attempted to hijack a company cargo plane traveling from Memphis, Tennessee, to San Jose, California, while riding as a jump seat passenger. Auburn Calloway attacked the flight crew armed with a hammer and a spear gun. The crew subdued him and safely landed the plane, despite those who confronted Calloway suffering extensive injuries. Investigators said Calloway had intended to crash the plane after facing possible disciplinary measures.

A Japan Airlines flight from Fukuoka to Tokyo crashed in Tokyo Bay just as it was landing, killing 24 of the 174 people on board. Investigators said there was a fight in the cockpit as the pilot, Seiji Katagiri, put the engines into reverse thrust. They also later determined Katagiri, who survived the crash, had been deemed fit to fly even after having a history of mental illness, including paranoid schizophrenia.

Associated Press transportation writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this story.

FILE - A rescue helicopter flies over debris of a Germanwings passenger jet, near Seyne-les-Alpes, Frances, March 24, 2015. (AP Photo/Claude Paris, File)

FILE - In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, search and rescue workers search through debris at the China Eastern flight crash site in Tengxian County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on March 24, 2022. (Lu Boan/Xinhua via AP, File)

Passengers embark on a FlyDubai aircraft at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

A FlyDubai aircraft carrying Israelis who experienced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia is seen parked at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

An FlyDubai plane carrying Israeli passengers who had earlier been aboard another FlyDubai aircraft that made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia approaches Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Tennessee governor ordered an outside investigation and halted executions late Wednesday, hours after an inmate survived a lethal injection attempt.

Tennessee officials were unable to put Christa Gail Pike to death for a 1995 murder after administering two doses of a lethal drug. A death penalty expert said it was an unprecedented failure.

Gov. Bill Lee said in a statement that he has ordered “a comprehensive, third-party review to determine exactly what occurred” and that scheduled executions will not be carried out this year.

“Carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence is among the State’s most serious responsibilities, and the people of Tennessee expect it to be done in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but is effective,” he said.

Tennessee only has one other execution scheduled this year.

Pike, 50, had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. Wednesday for the killing she committed at age 18 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in more than 200 years. An appeals court stopped the lethal injection just an hour before it was to start and hours later the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that stay.

Officials gave Pike two doses of pentobarbital, her attorneys said in court filings late Wednesday.

Pike was alive and loudly snoring after the attempted lethal injection and taken by ambulance from the prison, her attorneys said. She was being treated at a hospital, but they said they hadn’t been told about her condition.

The Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement that they “followed every step of the State’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office.”

The state's execution protocol calls for a secondary set of drug syringes to be administered “if the inmate is not deceased” after the first set. It does not spell out what happens if the subject is alive after the second set.

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said what Pike experienced is “singular and unparalleled.”

Seven other people have survived medical problems due to an execution team's failure to access a vein to administer lethal injection drugs, but no one has stayed alive after receiving the drugs used in such executions, she said.

Media witnesses observing from a separate room said officials raised curtains to the execution chamber at 7:27 p.m., showing Pike strapped to a gurney.

“I’m going to leave this world the way I spent most of my life and that is in love,” she said in her “last” words. She described herself as at peace.

But Pike remained awake and at one point raised her head and asked prison officials if her arm was supposed to feel that way. It was not clear what she was referencing.

By 8:26 p.m., execution witnesses reported that the second dose of pentobarbital had been administered.

Pike continued to be heard snoring behind the closed curtain until the microphone was cut off at 8:53 p.m. At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area.

Lawyers for Pike filed an emergency motion late Wednesday to the Tennessee Supreme Court seeking to immediately halt and stay the execution, saying she was in “unnecessary agony” and it was violating her right to be executed free of cruel and unusual punishment. They also filed motions in the Sixth Circuit court and district court.

It was the second time this year that Tennessee has been unable to carry out an execution: In May state officials called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing three people in 1994, after executioners tried and failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

Pike and her boyfriend were convicted of the fatal stabbing and beating in 1995 of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville. The case garnered widespread attention in part because of a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.

Pike was initially scheduled to be put to death in the morning, and witnesses had gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.

The attorney general’s office appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.

Later in the day, the high court cleared the way for the execution to proceed. The conservative majority did not explain their order, while the three liberal members signed a dissent that said Pike’s claims deserved a closer look.

Pike did not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argued that the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse.

As the execution date drew near, debate renewed over the death penalty for young offenders.

Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.

After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”

“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done,” Pike said in a statement.

Slemmer’s mother had come to the prison in the hopes of seeing the lethal injection go forward. She's said she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.

“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.

Martinez said her daughter’s age also should matter in deciding Pike’s fate.

“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 in September.

The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.

Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.

Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Pike would have been the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.

Tennessee announced in 2024 that it was switching from a three-drug series for lethal injections to the single drug pentobarbital. That came more than two years after the state abruptly halted the execution of Oscar Smith and acknowledged that it had failed to ensure its lethal injection drugs were tested properly.

This story has been updated to correct that Pike had been scheduled for execution at 10 a.m. local time, not 11 a.m. and that the lawyers filed an emergency motion to the Tennessee Supreme Court, not U.S.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.

Emergency vehicles arrive at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution after the execution of Christa Pike was halted Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)

This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)