'We saw the end': Passenger on board terrifying Flydubai flight details chaos

Well, it's fair to say the stories emanating out of Flight Dubai 1073 are just harrowing. The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, where the co-pilot stabbed the captain, put the aircraft into a nosedive. It was saved by passengers, an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, incredibly saving the lives on all, of all on board. But imagine being on board that aircraft. Imagine witnessing the terror in the sky. That's exactly what happened to our next guest. Joining me on the line now from Tel Aviv in Israel is Hila Evron Cohen. She was a passenger on board Flight Dubai 1073 with her husband and two sons. Hila, good afternoon and thank you so much for your time.

Good afternoon, good morning in Israel.

Oh, first and foremost, how are you and how is your family?

Well, it's like, um, ups, ups and downs all the time. You know, the... From the moment we just thanks God that we are alive to the, to the, to, to know that we were seconds from crashing. It's, it's just like that.

When did you first know that there was something wrong on, on board your flight?

Um, I think that just from the beginning, because, uh, the beginning of the, the, the, the attack actually, because I was sleeping. In the middle of a movie I just, uh, fell asleep and then I felt something. I opened my eyes. It probably was the first, uh, turbulence or, or the, the bo- the drop, the first drop of the airplane. I opened my eyes and I saw all the screens black, and I looked at my husband, he looked at me, and in a second the airplane just actually turned to the, to the left and, and you cannot imagine that it's, it's normal, that it's something that happens. It's, it-- We knew that something bad is happening.

Could you-

And after that was the, the, the drop, the, the, the dive.

Th- that dive where the aircraft we now know plunged 17,000, uh, thousand feet in a matter of-

Yeah

... a minute. Uh, how terrifying was that for all on board and, and with your sons next to you?

Wow. Wow. I cannot, I cannot im- The words cannot explain what the body and mind is going through. It... I'm hugging them. I'm praying for them. I, I, I've, I had a, we had a, a bar mitzvah trip, uh, [laughs] of, uh, Hillel, and we had so, so beautiful time of family time together and I thought, "This is it. This is how it's going to end." And our older gir- daughter, she's in the Israeli army, she could not, uh, v- come to the trip with us, and I thought, "Oh my God, is she's going to be alone. She's going to, to lost all her family." We saw the end. We, we just saw the end of this.

So a- after that drop, which I, I can't, I can't imagine, because, uh, all of us have been on flights, Hila, where, you know, there's a little bit of turbulence and it, it gives you a little bit of a fright. But to drop 17,000 feet, uh, w- when did you know that something was going on up at the cockpit? Could, could... Did you have eyes on the cockpit? Could you see passengers making their way to the front of the plane?

Yeah. Yeah. Yes, of course. We saw, we saw people going. We knew, but we couldn't, we didn't... I couldn't leave my, my boys alone. I had, have, had to be there for them, and also my husband for, for me, and he wanted to go, but he knew that if