‘He’s stabbing the pilot’: How the drama unfolded on Flydubai Flight 1073

Six-year-old airline passenger Nina Manes needed to pee as the Flydubai airplane she was on approached Jordanian airspace on its way from Dubai to Tel Aviv. Asking her mother to take her to the toilet was a great stroke of fortune — they stumbled upon an unfolding midair drama and sounded an alarm that helped save them all from plunging to their deaths.

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Nina was guided by her mother, Tali, to the front of the plane, Wednesday, just as one pilot lunged to attack the other in an apparent attempt to bring down the plane. Attracted by shouting, she looked inside the cockpit.

“There was blood all over the cockpit and very, very sharp fighting moves,” Tali told Israeli media. “I screamed, ‘He’s stabbing the pilot, he’s stabbing the pilot, come help!’ People looked at me and didn’t understand.”

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Her shouts of alarm triggered an incredible effort by passengers and crew to save the plane and themselves, according to witness accounts.

Here is what witnesses say happened.

Flydubai Flight FZ1073 was carrying 174 passengers and eight crew members from Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf, to Tel Aviv, a city on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The daily flight is supposed to be a non-stop trip of 2,130 kilometres, taking about three and a half hours.

With an hour left before landing, the trip turned terrifying.

What the mother and daughter saw in the cockpit, officials say, was a co-pilot attacking his fellow pilot, stabbing him in an apparent fight for control of the plane. Their screams brought passengers running,

The injured captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian man now hailed as a hero, described on Friday his desperate fight inside the cockpit.

“I was fighting for my life,” he said in Gujarati. “I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed. At that time, I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the door was right there,” he said.

“Smit, just do it. The door is right there. I was being hit even then, but I just opened the door and everyone came in.”

Once Machchhar unlocked the cockpit door passengers waiting outside swarmed in.

“Someone shouted ‘stabbing’ and my husband immediately understood what was happening and rushed to the front of the plane, and along with other Israelis they neutralized the terrorist,” another passenger told Channel 12.

Witnesses said one passenger, Yaniv Hayoun, a plumber, grabbed and pinned down the attacker while another, Shota Musaev, who is a dentist, provided first aid to Machchhar.

“There were no pilots on the chairs. One was down on the floor and one on the instruments,” Hayun said afterwards in Hebrew. “I caught the attacker. I put him in a chokehold and pulled him out first. I jumped back into the cockpit and pulled the yokes back.”

A video from inside the cockpit shows two injured and bloodied men in uniform on the floor being treated beside a blood-smeared wall.

Others onboard, including an off-duty pilot, worked to stabilize the plane that was nosediving toward the desert sand.

Passenger Almog Italie said it felt like “we were having very big turbulence” before he heard the fighting at the front of the plane. “And the crew member, along with the passengers gained control, took over.”

Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, showed the Boeing 737 Max plummeted from an altitude of about 34,000 feet to 17,000 feet in less than two minutes. Videos from inside the plane show the plane shaking as it plunged, with some passengers screaming and crying, some shielding children, others crouching in the aisle.

The plane was “pretty much out of control,” said passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon. “It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralized him.”

After about 10 minutes of erratic flying, the plane was brought under control and its dangerous flight stabilized. From within the cockpit, the 7700 and 7500 emergency distress codes were activated, suggesting an attempted hijacking as opposed to a mechanical problem.

Passengers sent out status reports and pleas for help from onboard.

“We’re here during a hijacking of the plane,” Asaf Rejwan, one of the passengers, said in Hebrew with blood trickling down his forehead and nose. “We control the terrorist. All the passengers are OK, but not the pilot. Whoever’s hearing me, we need help.”

The Israeli military reportedly scrambled fighter jets fearing a 9/11 scenario mimicking the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes were flown into buildings in the United States.

The plane made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Flydubai said a third Flydubai pilot in the cabin landed the plane. Onboard videos show passengers clapping and cheering on touchdown.

The plane’s tail was damaged, presumably by the sudden plunge.

Most of the passengers were Israeli and were shuttled to a replacement plane to complete their journey to Tel Aviv, where they were greeted by family, officials and media.

“There were stabbings and a lot of blood. We’re very emotional and under terrible stress; it’s very difficult for me to talk,” one passenger said. Passenger Chaim Nazarovitz said that during the aircraft’s fast descent he felt like he was “not among the living.”

When Hayoun, the plumber, was greeted at Tel Aviv airport by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, Hayoun’s T-shirt and pants were spattered with blood. When he was asked about the passengers’ actions, Hayoun said: “Unfortunately we didn’t succeed in killing him, but it will take him awhile to recover.”

Machchhar, looking weary and with his head bandaged and an oxygen tube in his nose, spoke publicly Friday about his battle in the cockpit to his prime minister as well as India’s Narendra Modi, who hailed him as a hero. Machchhar, the father of two young children, apologized for being emotional.

The co-pilot accused in the attack has not been named but was identified by Israeli officials as being from Oman, a Persian Gulf country that borders the U.A.E.

The circumstances of the incident are under investigation.

On Thursday, Netanyahu said the Omani man was “suicidal” and “underwent Islamic radical indoctrination,” in an interview with Fox News. An Israeli spokesman told The Washington Post: “He talks on his social media about killing Jews. So it’s very clear he had the intent and the motive to kill Jews before.”

A senior policy adviser to U.A.E. President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed called the midair incident a “dangerous terrorist act.”

Flydubai is also investigating what happened.

“At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation,” Flydubai said in a statement.

National Post, with additional reporting from wire services

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