Following the traumatic incident in the skies and the struggle during a flight from Dubai to Ben Gurion Airport, in which the co-pilot attacked the chief pilot and suspected that he wanted to crash the plane onto its passengers, I was reminded of an incident in which an Israeli pilot hit the co-pilot during the "takeoff run" from Abu Rhodes in Sinai to Lod Airport, which is Ben Gurion Airport.
The extraordinary incident occurred in the late 60s. I worked for the company "Netivei Neft", which produced oil in the oil fields in Sinai. I dealt with security and safety issues. The employees' physical contact with Israel was on a flight of a "Dakota" plane that the company purchased. It flew daily on the Lod airport - Abu Rhodes airstrip. The plane flew for an hour and a half and landed in Abu Rhodes in the evening.
Its passengers, who were returning from vacation, got off and were replaced by workers who had gone on vacation in Israel.
The day I left for vacation, I waited at the Abu Rhodes rest area with the others who were leaving.
The Dakota plane landed, its passengers disembarked, and in their place, the passengers headed north boarded.
One of the passengers on the plane to the north said that arriving passengers told them to beware of the pilots. Passengers said that the pilots argued with each other during the flight to Abu Rhodes. What exactly was the argument about was unclear.
The plane began to "run" down the runway toward takeoff. The door separating the cockpit from the cabin was open. Then, as it accelerated, I saw the pilot sitting on the left (the lead pilot) hit the hand of the co-pilot, who was also holding the throttle stick. The speed increased, the plane was about to "pitch" and take off.
Three or four passengers, including me, ran to the cockpit and shouted to stop the takeoff. "We don't want you to kill us," we shouted to the pilots. They slowed down the "run" and the plane turned around and returned to its previous stop.
The passengers got off the plane in anger. The oil field manager was called to the landing. He said that he himself was among the passengers who arrived on this plane. He spoke to the pilots, calmed things down, and the plane took off again about an hour later.
The flight passed relatively calmly, but the trauma was not forgotten.