The Indian airline captain, who helped stop an apparent attempt to crash a FlyDubai flight, has revealed new details of tense moments in the cockpit before the attacker was incapacitated in a conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The pilot, captain Smit Machchhar, hailing from the Indian financial hub of Mumbai, said he initially thought the aircraft bound for Israel from the Dubai International Airport had suffered damage.
“I thought something was not right with the aircraft...But then the blow kept coming, one after the other. And that's when I realised that it's not the aircraft; it's the other guy who was in the cockpit with me,” Mr Machchhar told the Israeli PM on a video call on Sunday.
The Indian pilot is now recovering at a hospital in Abu Dhabi.
The co-pilot has been identified as 29-year-old Hammam al-Hammami, an Omani national, according to Israeli and Saudi media reports.
Mr Machchhar said he tried to stop the co-pilot initially, but was badly affected by the blows to the back of his head.
"I did try to stop him, but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing. And I was completely blurred out," the Indian pilot said, adding that he then realised the aircraft was descending sharply.
"My memory is still intact. It's in bits and pieces right now. But this is what I remember out of that time,” he said.
The FlyDubai flight FZ1073, carrying 182 people, plunged over 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds during the incident as it flew over Saudi Arabia on the journey from the UAE to Israel, according to the flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
The Indian pilot said the cockpit could be opened only using a code from the outside, but could be more easily opened from the inside.
“From the outside, it could only be opened with a code. My colleagues from outside were trying to put in the code, but the guy was not allowing them to open the code," he said.
“It was a short, quick twist. Once I had my hands on the knob, I twisted and opened it,” he said, adding, however, that the Omani co-pilot closed it quickly.
As he was lying on the cockpit floor, he said he realised he had “one last fight” left in him.
"And that's when I pushed against everything. I gave everything that I had and just went for the door and opened the door,” Mr Machchhar told Netanyahu.
Once he opened the door successfully, passengers entered and restrained the attacker.
"And thankfully, people were waiting to bounce back, took over the control, and the rest is what, you know," he said.
Yaniv Hayoun, one of the passengers who incapacitated the attacker, said he ran to the cockpit as the plane nosedived and “straightened the plane out a bit”.
On Friday, Mr Machchhar spoke to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi from the Saudi hospital, his head still bandaged and tubes in his nose.
“I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,” he said from the hospital.
“I was fighting for my life. At one point, I realised that if I didn’t get up … then passengers would lose their lives,” he told Mr Modi.
The Israeli prime minister invited Mr Machchhar and Mr Modi to Israel’s Independence Day celebrations in May 2027.
“I want to have Captain Smit and Prime Minister Modi, our great friends. I really would like them to bear a celebratory flame," Mr Netanyahu said.
Investigations are still underway to determine the motive and the background of Al-Hammami.
The Omani co-pilot apprehended for the incident “completed a distance-learning course in aviation management” from Buckinghamshire New University in 2023, a spokesperson for the university said yesterday.
Australian agencies are also reportedly investigating his background, after it emerged that he spent about two years in the country as a student.
It has also emerged that Mr Al-Hammami was banned from flying by Omani authorities last year due to his radical views.
But it remains unclear if this ban was communicated by Omani officials previously to the airline authorities of Israel and Saudi Arabia.
