A passenger talks about the backup pilots who landed the Flydubai plane

Brief retelling from RIA II

Dentist Shota Musaev said that the reserve pilots who landed the Flydubai plane on the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight were apparently from New Zealand and South Africa.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog presented awards for civic heroism to Shota Musaev and five other Israelis who acted during the incident aboard Flydubai.

Plumber Yaniv Hayun neutralized the pilot who attacked the captain of the aircraft, and for a short time found himself at the controls of the plane.

JERUSALEM, Oct 9 - RIA Novosti. Israeli dentist Shota Musaev, who saved the wounded Indian Flydubai pilot on the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, told RIA Novosti that the reserve pilots who landed the plane were apparently from New Zealand and South Africa.

On Thursday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog presented awards for civilian heroism to Shota Musaev and five other Israelis who acted during the incident aboard Flydubai to prevent the Sept. 30 plane crash.

Earlier, another Israeli passenger on that flight, plumber Yaniv Hayun, who neutralized the pilot who attacked the captain of the aircraft, told reporters that for a short time he was at the controls of the plane and pulled it towards himself to bring the board out of a dive. According to him, he knew about the need to pull the steering wheel in such a situation thanks to watching a documentary series about the investigation of plane crashes.

“These pilots asked Yaniv to leave the cockpit because they were not fully concentrated. They needed to calm down in order to continue flying the plane. I talked to them, and, as I understood, one of them was from New Zealand, and the other was from South Africa,” said Musaev, who also helped tie up the attacker with headphone wires.

According to Musaev, the reserve pilots were English-speaking.

“After landing in Saudi Arabia, I met one of them. I started talking to him in Russian, but he said that he didn’t know Russian, and we continued the conversation in English,” the agency’s interlocutor noted, calling the reserve crew heroes.

A Flydubai plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30 signaled an emergency and a short time later made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. It is known that there were two reserve pilots on board. The airline later confirmed that a fight broke out between the pilots during the flight. Later, information appeared in the media that one of the pilots injured the second and wanted to cause a plane crash. This information was confirmed to RIA Novosti by passengers on that flight. The alleged attacker is 29-year-old Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, who previously worked for Oman Air and was suspended from flying due to his radical views.