Nearly two and a half hours out of Dubai, passengers on Flight 1073 felt the plane plunge more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds – shaking the cabin as it dropped over Saudi Arabia.
Inside the cockpit on Sept. 30, Flydubai airlines pilot Smit Machchhar had just been stabbed by his fellow co-pilot in an apparent effort to crash the plane carrying 170 passengers, including four with U.S. citizenship, to Tel Aviv.
People sitting near the front of the Boeing 737, including an Israeli plumber, knew something was wrong and rushed to enter a fortified cockpit that’s normally locked tight, according to news reports.
Machchhar, lying on the ground and bleeding, managed to unlock it, allowing passengers to subdue the co-pilot and allow the plane to be stabilized. Then another saving grace: A second flight crew, riding on board, was able to land the plane 83 minutes after it first started dropping.
Authorities are trying to determine the still-unnamed co-pilot’s motivation – he was arrested when the plane landed in Saudi Arabia. He appeared to be an Omani national acting alone, but the incident is still under investigation, Israeli security officials told Reuters. He was reported to have worked for Flydubai for less than a year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox News the man appeared suicidal and cited a background that included “Islamist tendencies.”
The incident comes at a fraught time in the Middle East. The United States and Israel remain at war with Iran since February. And it is nearly the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which fueled a war that destroyed much of Gaza and inflamed the region.
After terrorists stormed the cockpits of four planes in the 9/11 attacks, airlines worldwide have fortified cockpits from outside threats, said Jeff Price, a leading expert in aviation security and a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.
But that can turn into a liability when a crew member seeks to do harm, such as in 2015, when the pilot of a Germanwings flight locked the captain out of the cockpit during a bathroom break and crashed the plane into the French Alps. While such cases are rare, Price said that incident led to international airlines to require at least one other person besides a pilot be in the cockpit.
“It really is the law of unintended consequences where you try and fix one problem and then end up actually creating another problem,” he told USA TODAY.
Other flight crew may have had cockpit door-lock override codes, Price said. But he noted that the co-pilot would also likely have had the ability to override those efforts from inside the cockpit.
Netanyahu said in an interview that the attacker might have used an ax. Price said cockpit axes are standard equipment meant to help pilots escape in case of a crash.
Machchhar, an Indian national, was hailed as a hero by Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for unlocking the cockpit door, while being stabbed and fighting for his life.
“His valour helped save hundreds of lives and avert a great tragedy,” Modi said on social media.
It allowed several people to reportedly storm the cockpit, including Yaniv Chayon, a plumber traveling with his family. Passengers subdued the attacker and helped stabilize the nosediving plane.
In addition, Israeli dentist Shota Musayev, who was traveling back from China, told the Times of Israel that he helped stop Machchhar’s bleeding.
“When I came into the cockpit, the pilot was in real bad shape, with heavy bleeding, particularly from his head,” he said. “These were very hard moments, but together with a few brave people on the plane, we managed to avert a situation that was very close to a disaster.”
Flydubai said in a statement that “on-duty flydubai crew traveling on the flight secured the aircraft, diverted and landed it safely at Tabuk.” Price said it’s common on some long international flights to have an extra set of pilots to give the main crew a rest.
Passengers clapped and sang as the plane landed, according to a video online.
The co-pilot was arrested after landing. A replacement flight flew the passengers to Tel Aviv, with Netanyahu greeting them. Flydubai said its flights to and from Israel will be suspended while the investigation continues.
The wounded pilot, Machchhar, was in the hospital in stable condition, according to the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia, and was being celebrated in his home country.
Jinat Shah, who used to live next door to Machchhar in Mumbai before the pilot moved to Dubai, told an Indian news agency the pilot was “talented, soft spoken (and) kind-hearted.”
Chris Kenning is a national correspondent at USA TODAY. Reach him at ckenning@usatoday.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How a bleeding pilot, plumber and spare crew averted a plane crash
Leave a Reply