PM Netanyahu hails Flydubai captain as ‘true hero’ after hijacking attempt

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by telephone with Indian citizen Captain Smit Machchhar on Saturday evening, hailing the pilot of the hijacked Flydubai Flight 1073 as “a true hero” and listening to his account of how he and his passengers prevented the aircraft from crashing after his co-pilot attacked him and attempted to take control of the plane.

Machchhar, who is currently hospitalized in the United Arab Emirates, told Netanyahu that his co-pilot, identified as Hamam al-Hammami, asked to pray on the floor of the cockpit behind the control panel. About five minutes later, Machchhar felt “a big blow” hit him on the back of the head and initially thought the aircraft had suffered catastrophic damage.

“But then, after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other,” he said. “That’s when I realized that it’s not the aircraft; it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

Al-Hammami used the “crash axe,” an emergency tool kept in the cockpit of most commercial aircraft, as a weapon to attack Machchhar and attempted to take control of the aircraft so he could crash it into the ground, killing its 180 mostly Israeli passengers.

Machchhar said that although he was severely wounded in the attack and could barely see, he could feel that the aircraft was “sharply going down” and knew he had only a short time to save himself and his passengers.

Al-Hammami managed to stop him from opening the cockpit door once, but Machchhar said, “I had that one last fight left in me,” and managed to open the door on his second attempt, allowing passengers to enter, subdue al-Hammami and take control of the aircraft to prevent it from crashing.

“If I don’t do it, I’m going to die,” he recalled saying to himself. “I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door. My colleagues from outside were trying to put in the code, but the guy was not allowing [them to enter] the code.”

Machchhar said he eventually reached the lever that opens the door manually and gave it a “short, quick twist” to open it.

“It’s a twist of fate,” Netanyahu replied, “and it’s a twist of faith, and what you did is remarkable.”

“You are a hero of Israel, you are a hero of India, and you are a hero of the entire world,” Netanyahu told him. “And I can tell you that people here will welcome you with open arms.”

Netanyahu also invited Machchhar and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a close geopolitical ally of Netanyahu, to light a torch at Israel’s Independence Day celebration in May 2027.

Another passenger who helped save the aircraft, Yaniv Hayun, a plumber who grabbed the controls and helped pull the plane out of its steep dive after entering the cockpit with other passengers, gave an interview over the weekend to Israel’s Channel 12.

“At some stage I was able to get up when the plane balanced out a little,” Hayun recalled. “Then I went to the door [of the cockpit]. A crew member was standing there, apparently a pilot, as he had on a white shirt… I moved him and opened the door. He didn’t resist. It was a little difficult [to open] because the Indian pilot was lying on the door. The terrorist was bent over with his knees on the controls between the pilot seats in the cockpit and was trying to break the equipment.”

Hayun said that he quickly grabbed al-Hammami by the neck and moved him away from the flight controls, after which other men who had entered the cockpit tied him up using the wire from a pair of headphones.

He then sat in the pilot’s seat and pulled back on the controls, bringing the aircraft out of its dive. After a few seconds, an off-duty pilot who had been a passenger on the flight took control and managed to stabilize the aircraft.

Hayun said the passengers kept a close watch on the rest of the crew for the remainder of the flight, unsure whether they were also part of the hijacking plan.

Meanwhile, it came to light over the weekend that al-Hammami had been banned from flying for the Omani national airline after authorities there investigated him and found evidence that he had become radicalized.

However, he had been part of the cockpit crew on several Flydubai flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv over the last several months and had reportedly never raised any suspicion.

Israeli authorities are facing criticism over their failure to identify signs that al-Hammami posed a threat, despite what should have been numerous red flags. Israeli security agencies are also investigating several other foreign airlines that fly to and from Israel to determine whether any other pilots might be planning a similar terrorist attack.