After a knife attack in the cockpit: Indian pilot reports fight for passenger's life

After a co-pilot was attacked with a knife in the cockpit of a Flydubai plane, the injured captain reported on his fight for the lives of the passengers. Indian airline captain Smit Machchhar told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi via video link on Friday that he was fighting for his life in the minutes after the attack.

It was clear to him that he had to get up again to save the lives of the people on board, said Machchhar, who is currently being treated in a hospital in Abu Dhabi, describing the situation: "I had so many wounds. I had fallen to the ground," he said from the hospital with his head bandaged and tubes in his nose. The conversation was published in full on the Indian Prime Minister's YouTube channel.

The plane with 182 people on board was en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv and was diverted to land in Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia.

The captain cried as she remembered the attack. "I was fighting for my life. At some point I realized that if I didn't get up, the passengers would lose their lives."

Machchhar was seriously injured and fell to the ground in the attack by the Omani co-pilot on Wednesday. Nevertheless, he noticed the plane's steep descent. "I have been flying aircraft for 17 years and have been a captain for the last 11 years. I can feel exactly what is happening to an aircraft even when my eyes are closed. When I was on the ground, I felt the aircraft was going down," Machchhar said.

So Machchhar got up again despite the loss of blood. He even managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter and overpower the co-pilot. Meanwhile, the Boeing 737 rapidly lost altitude, witnesses and Israeli authorities said.

In a conversation with Modi, the pilot also explained where he got the strength from: In the difficult moments, he recited from a devotion in honor of the monkey god Hanuman, who is traditionally asked for strength and courage. “God Hanuman gave me courage,” he told Modi.

Numerous videos on social networks document the dramatic minutes after the attack. You can see passengers reaching the cockpit and later a doctor on board treating the injured captain. They keep trying to keep him awake. "Stay awake, stay awake! Don't fall asleep!" can be heard several times.

The pilot was treated by a fellow dentist with Georgian-Jewish roots: “The pilot lost a lot of blood,” Shota Musaev told the British Daily Mail. "His arm was slashed, as was his neck. He also had a very deep wound on the back of his head. The entire cockpit was covered in blood, but he was conscious. We were practically running out of first aid supplies. Somehow we managed to stop the bleeding with pieces of cloth."

Only later did Musaev realize what the injured pilot had done. "If the cockpit had remained locked, we probably wouldn't have been able to do anything. It would have been a second September 11th, like back then in America." Musaev also fought back tears when asked about the most difficult moment in these minutes. “Probably the moment I told my wife I was going to help and basically said goodbye to her.”

Politicians praised Machchhar for preventing a potential disaster. Modi himself said the pilot's "courage, patience and presence of mind" saved many lives.

It is still unclear who the co-pilot was. He was taken into custody in Saudi Arabia and is being interrogated there. His motive for the attack is unclear. According to witnesses, after his knife attack on the pilot, he tried to destroy instruments in the cockpit. However, the passengers were able to stop him.

“We grabbed the attacker by the neck and pulled him out,” said dentist Shota Musaev. His hands and feet were then tied. Meanwhile, the man is said to have repeatedly begged the passengers to kill him. “He didn’t say anything except to beg us: ‘Kill me,’” Musaev said.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already announced that the attacker has Omani citizenship. It is assumed that it was a suicide bomber who had planned a terrorist attack. "His social media accounts clearly show that he has been radicalized by a jihadist ideology. He talks about killing Jews," the British Daily Mail also quoted an Israeli official as saying.

Captain Machchhar, who is married with two children, has been with Flydubai for about four years, according to his LinkedIn profile. Previously, he worked for SpiceJet, an Indian low-cost airline, for eleven years. He completed more than 9,750 flight hours with SpiceJet.

Philip Kean, managing director of the Mainland Air flying school in New Zealand where Machchhar trained, said pilots were trained to take control if another crew member became incapacitated. However, training does not normally prepare people for a knife attack by a colleague, he told the AP news agency on Friday. “I don’t think there’s much in the handbook about being stabbed,” Kean said. "You're friends and you fly together. No one would expect someone to attack you like that."