The captain of a Flydubai flight who was attacked by a co-pilot who intended to crash the plane described blocking blows of an ax to his head and screams for help as he reached to open the cockpit door.
Captain Smit Machchhar was hailed a hero for his role in preventing a disaster on the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight last month, helping to thwart what the UAE attorney general called an attempted suicide bombing by the co-pilot who intended to crash the plane at Ben Gurion Airport.
Speaking in an interview with The National newspaper from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, his head and left arm bandaged, Machchhar said that when the first blow was struck, he thought something had gone ‘horribly wrong with the structure of the plane’ before quickly realizing he was being attacked and things had ‘taken a drastic turn’.
“The next thought was I need help here,” he said. “My immediate action was to free myself from the seat belts and I tried to block the blows as much as possible.”
He showed his injured arm as he defended himself. “The blows were coming to the head. Immediately, my hand went to the handle that opens the door and (I was) screaming for my colleagues, shouting his name. I think it was the first time I lost consciousness.”
Flight FZ1073 was in Saudi airspace when the co-pilot attacked Machchhar with a crash axe, an item usually kept in the cockpit in case of emergency.
The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 feet (4,900 m) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were on board landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect, an Omani national, was transferred to the United Arab Emirates, flydubai’s country of origin.
The plan was inspired by the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, UAE prosecutors said following their criminal investigation launched on October 1.
Machchhar said he heard the cockpit door open and screams “between my colleague and the guy.” He said the scariest thing he felt was the nose of the plane “going steeply down.”
“I wasn’t really sure I’d make it out alive. Did I give up? No.”
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