The captain of a Flydubai flight who was attacked by a co-pilot who intended to crash the plane has described blocking axe blows to the head and screaming for help as he reached for a knob to open the cockpit door. Smit Machchhar has been hailed as a hero for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last month, helping to thwart what the UAE attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who intended to crash the plane into 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 landed, he thought something had gone “horribly wrong with the aircraft structure,“ before quickly realizing he was being attacked and things had “taken a drastic turn.” “The next thought was I need to get help in here,” he said in the interview published on Saturday.
The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 feet (4,900 meters) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were on board landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect, an Omani national, was transferred to the UAE, Flydubai’s home country. The plan was inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., UAE public prosecutors say, as a result of their criminal investigation launched on Oct. 1.
Machchhar said he heard the cockpit door opening and screaming “between my colleague and the guy.” He said the scariest thing he felt was the aircraft nose “steeply going down.” “I was not very sure that I’ll make it out alive from this.
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