FlyDubai Captain Speaks Out: “While I Was Flying, the Co-pilot Prayed Behind Me, Then the Sudden Attack Began”

From his hospital bed, FlyDubai Captain Smit Machchhar has broken his silence, detailing the terrifying cockpit ambush on Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv. In a powerful video call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Captain Smit recounted the harrowing full story:

The Full Transcript of Captain Smit Machchhar The Routine Departure & The Prayer:

“It was just a normal flight. The co-pilot wanted to pray. A lot of the locals, they do pray, which is not out of the ordinary. While he was praying, out of respect, I was just looking at the front and not at the back – and suddenly after about four, five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head.”

Realizing It Was an Attack & The Nosedive:

“My first thought was that the aircraft had suffered a catastrophic malfunction. But after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other. That’s when I realized that it’s not the aircraft – it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”, “I did try to stop him, but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost nothing. I was completely blurred out. And at that point, the next feeling that I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down.”

The Struggle on the Floor & Reaching the Door:

“I did try and manage to open the cockpit door once, but I think he shut it back closed. 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.”, “I had that one last fight left in me. Call it personal or call it for people, but I did it; if I don’t do it, I’m going to 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, took over the control, and the rest is what you know, sir.”

Explaining the Cockpit Door Mechanism “How did you manage to open the door?” Captain Smit replied:

“The door, from the inside, has a twist-to-open mechanism. From the outside, you can only open the door with a code. My colleagues from outside were trying to put in the code, but the guy was not allowing to open using the code.”, “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. The issue was to reach to that point. Once I had my hands on the knob, I guess I twisted it and I opened it.”

Absolute heroism under unimaginable pressure.