For Captain Smit Machchhar’s parents, September 30 was not the day their son became a hero. It was the day they learnt that their only child had been badly injured in a mid-air attack and was lying in a military hospital in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, while they struggled to find a way to reach him.
As the world hailed the flydubai pilot for helping avert a potential disaster involving 174 people, his parents in Mumbai were facing a very different reality: hours of uncertainty over whether their son would survive, followed by a frantic journey to his bedside.
