The Indian pilot who was stabbed in the cockpit of a Flydubai aircraft bound for Tel Aviv has described the moment he decided he was not going to let more than 170 passengers die. Captain Smit Machchhar told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call that he opened the cockpit door from the inside after being knocked to the floor and attacked by his co-pilot, allowing others aboard to help bring the aircraft under control.
How the aircraft descended
Flydubai flight FZ1073, flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv in the early hours of Wednesday, plunged more than 17,000 feet two and a half hours into the journey. It first sent an emergency signal to air traffic controllers before switching to code squawk 7500, the transponder code that indicates a hijack. After fellow passengers overpowered the attacker, two reserve pilots who were on board landed the aircraft safely at Tabuk Airport in north-western Saudi Arabia at 06:58 local time.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News the attacker was an Omani national, and said investigations suggested he had undergone Islamist radical indoctrination. He added that once the attacker had been subdued and tied up, he was calling out to the aircrew to kill him, indicating a suicidal intent. The United Arab Emirates has begun investigating whether the incident was linked to any terrorist activity.
Recovery and recognition
Machchhar, hailed by Netanyahu as a true hero, was taken to hospital in Tabuk before being airlifted to Abu Dhabi, where he is reported to be in a stable condition. The Indian embassy in the UAE said on Thursday that he is in good health and recovering well, and that Ambassador Deepak Mittal was proud to meet him. He told Modi he has been flying for 17 years and can tell what is happening to the plane even with his eyes closed, and that his courage, patience and quick decision-making saved many lives. Machchhar said he is not looking at his injury as a wound, but as a journey that will take time.
Why it matters
For UK travellers, the episode is a reminder that the security threat landscape now reaches into commercial cockpits on routes out of the Gulf. Questions remain open about how an attacker with a small knife came to be aboard, what screening procedures were applied to the crew, and how an aircraft fitted with reserve pilots flying together was carrying a serious vulnerability that was only tested in the air. Regulators typically review such events through the same framework used for accidents, and the Emirates investigation will feed into that work.
What happens next
Investigations are under way in the United Arab Emirates and Israel into the motive and any wider network behind the attack, and UAE authorities have said they are looking specifically at links to terrorist activity. Further interviews with survivors are expected. No criminal proceedings have yet been announced.
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