Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, who survived a violent assault by his Omani co-pilot inside a Flydubai cockpit and averted a catastrophic crash on September 30, revealed harrowing details of the incident during a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night.

Recovering at a hospital in Abu Dhabi, Machchhar recounted how he fought through blurred vision and severe disorientation to unlock the cockpit door from the inside, allowing crew members to intervene.


Omani pilot asks to pray

“It just was a normal flight, and the co-pilot wanted to pray, which a lot of locals do pray, and which is not out of the ordinary. But while he was praying, out of respect, I was just looking at the front and not at the back.”

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Omani pilot started hitting from behind

“And suddenly, after I think I would say about 4-5 minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head. My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft, and something is not right. But then after that, the blows kept coming one after the other, and that’s when I realised that it’s not the aircraft; it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

Machchhar was disoriented

“I did try to stop him, but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing, and I was completely blurred out, and at that point, the next thought I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down. So my memory is still in bits and pieces right now, but this is what I remember from that time.”

Machchhar tried to open the door

“And I did try to; I did try and manage to open the door once, but I think he shut it back. And at this point, I remember I was lying down on the cockpit floor, and I felt the aircraft and the whooshing sound and people screaming. And as I was telling the ambassador here that I had that one last fight left in me. That, you know, call it personal or call it for people. But let’s say I did it. That if I don’t do it, I’m gonna die.”

“And that’s when I pushed against everything. I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door. And thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back and take over the control, and the rest is what you know, sir.”

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Omani pilot did not allow the crew to open the door

“The door from the inside has a twist-to-open mechanism, and from the outside it cannot. It can only be opened with a code. So my colleagues from outside were trying to…. but the guy was not allowing….

Machchhar finally managed to open the door

“And the only way to open the door was to reach the knob, and like any other knob, just to twist it open, and it opens on its own. So there is no pin, but yes, the door. It was a short, quick twist, but the point was to reach that place, and once I had my hand on the knob, I guess I twisted it, and I opened it.”

Flydubai attack

Flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv on September 30 with 174 people on board, most of them Israelis. Midway through the flight, the Boeing 737 Max dropped sharply after the co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, attacked the captain. Passengers and other crew took back control of the cockpit, and the plane landed in Tabuk, in northwest Saudi Arabia. Authorities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel are now investigating.

Netanyahu has invited Machchhar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Israel for the country’s Independence Day, and called the pilot a “hero of Israel, India and the world”. He has also said the co-pilot went through “Islamist radical indoctrination”. The UAE is looking into the facts, the motive and whether the attack was planned or linked to terrorism.

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Meanwhile, in his call with PM Modi, from his hospital bed, Machchhar said he was lying on the cockpit floor when he knew that if he did not get up, the passengers could die. He said he was fighting for his own life, but would not let others die. He also said he recited the Hanuman Chalisa during the attack and that it gave him courage.