Captain Smit Machchhar lay bleeding on the cockpit floor of a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, pleading with a stranger for his life after his own co-pilot turned on him mid-air. "I don't want to die please," the captain reportedly told Dr Shuta Musaev, a Georgian dentist on board who became the only person with any medical training available to help him.
Musaev spent the next 45 minutes pressing down on wounds to the captain's head, neck and hand, refusing to let him close his eyes even for a moment. The flight was carrying more than 170 passengers when co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national, allegedly attacked Machchhar in what investigators believe was an attempt to crash the aircraft.
