What Really Happened on flydubai Flight FZ1073, and What Rav Berland Said the Night Before

The evening before, the Rav said:

"So these are things we need to know: what is happening, what to pray for."

"No tzaddik can say such a thing – only the Rebbe, who has such revelations..."

"We'll hear the news soon."

The next morning, at 34,000 feet, a plane carrying about 180 souls went into a dive.

On the night between Monday and Tuesday, the night of Rebbe Nachman's hilula, thousands danced all night with Rabbi Eliezer Berland, who stood on his balcony until dawn. As the Rav has taught, in the shiur in his house before the hilula and in other years, the dancing of Rebbe Nachman's hilula and of Simchat Torah sweetens the judgments and annuls decrees.

The next evening, Tuesday, the night of 19 Tishrei 5787, the Rav spoke after Maariv about the holiness of the sukkah. From there he turned to how quickly one can reach the Emirates and Uman today, and to airplanes.

"So it doesn't fall on the way"

That evening, with a smile, the Rav said: "[You get off the plane, say the Tikkun HaKlali –] five minutes... you come back to the plane and carry on – so it doesn't fall on the way." And, half in jest, he asked: "Did you hold the plane tight when you flew? You forgot to hold it – that's why it fell."

Then he said that one may not fall asleep even for a second, and brought proof from the Talmud: "Bring a Gemara, Tractate Sukkah – see what it says: they only danced and did not sleep – they only dozed while dancing." From there he turned to a pilot: "If you're a pilot... you're in the clouds, into space – you don't need to sleep at all," and to the Simchat Beit HaShoeva, where, as the Jerusalem Talmud in Tractate Sukkah teaches, divine inspiration was drawn: "He received it at the Shoeva – in the Yerushalmi, chapter HeChalil." Then he spoke about the planes:

"You travel to the Emirates – you get there within an hour... Now you leave at eight and arrive at eleven. If you travel to Uman, it's a two-hour flight, but it could be a quarter-hour flight... The fastest today is five thousand [km/h]. And there's the MiG... that's three... Now we're bringing out a plane of six thousand. Here there's a space plane, only it's so expensive. Like from New York to California, it arrived within a quarter of an hour, and fell into the sea, because landing it costs more than flying it. So these are things we need to know: what is happening, and what to pray for."

Later he spoke about Rebbe Nachman and said:

"No tzaddik can say such a thing – only the Rebbe, who has such revelations..."

"We'll hear the news soon"

The next morning, the news came: a dive of thousands of meters in a minute.

On Wednesday morning, 19 Tishrei, flydubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv with about 180 people on board, 166 of the passengers Israeli. At about 8:20 a.m. Israel time, as the Boeing 737 MAX cruised at 34,000 feet over northern Saudi Arabia, the first officer stabbed the captain and pushed the plane into a steep dive. Within about one minute it had dropped below 20,000 feet. At the bottom of the dive, falling that fast, the plane was just 27 seconds from hitting the ground, according to an analysis of the flight-tracking data. Then, at the last moment, the dive stopped and the plane climbed back up.

"Hold it tight!"

In the cockpit, the captain had been stabbed and badly wounded, bleeding heavily from his head and hands, and could not take control of the plane during the dive. At the controls sat the co-pilot, who was trying to bring it down. In the cabin, panic. "We thought we were going to die, 100 percent," one passenger said. Another sent farewell messages to his parents.

And then, one miracle after another:

The captain, wounded and bleeding, used the last of his strength to open the cockpit door.

Israeli passengers burst in. Yaniv Hayun grabbed the co-pilot in a chokehold, then jumped to the controls and pulled them back to stop the dive.

They overpowered the co-pilot and tied his hands and feet with the cables of the flight's media kits.

An Israeli dentist, Dr. Shota Mosayev, the only doctor on board, stopped the captain's heavy bleeding.

And "by chance," a British pilot was sitting as a passenger at the back of the plane, on his way to a connecting flight. After Yaniv Hayun stabilized the plane and handed control back to the wounded captain, this pilot took command and landed the damaged plane safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Defense Minister Israel Katz called it "an attempted jihadist terror attack, foiled thanks to the heroism of several Israeli passengers." The Israeli Air Force scrambled fighter jets, and all the passengers came out safe.

The next day, at the Hoshana Rabba Torah learning in the Knesset sukkah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "What we saw, what happened in this miracle yesterday – a chain of miracles took place here." He added: "We could have been sitting here today in national mourning, with a terrible blow to Israel, and here there was a great salvation."

Photos taken after the landing show part of the rudder missing from the tail. An aviation expert said the damage was caused by the stress of the dive itself.

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A damaged plane, a pilot who tried to bring it down, a bleeding captain and a panicked cabin – and yet, by an open miracle, the dive was stopped and the plane landed safely.

Who was holding up the plane in that nosedive?

"What is happening, what to pray for"

In his usual way, the Rav speaks in hints that are often understood only later. That evening he spoke about a flight to the Emirates, about a plane that "fell into the sea," and about needing to know "what is happening, and what to pray for." And with no clear link to what he was saying around it, he said: "We'll hear the news soon." Looking back, his words seem to describe a prayer to keep a plane airborne when its pilot cannot act – alongside a hint that the news would soon follow. The tzaddik knows what is about to happen, so that he knows what to pray for and can prevent a disaster. The very next morning, a plane that had taken off from Dubai, in the Emirates, carrying about 180 souls, most of them from Israel, dived toward the ground and was stopped at the last moment.

Passengers who rose from their seats, a pilot who happened to be sitting at the back of the plane on his way to a connecting flight, and a plane that landed safely despite the damage to its tail: a chain of miracles ending in rescue. "They mounted up to the heavens, they went down again to the depths... Then they cried out to Hashem in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. Let them give thanks to Hashem for His kindness, and for His wonders to the children of men" (Psalms 107).