Captain Smit Machchhar says it took him ‘one last push’ to save FlyDubai flight
Wounded on the cockpit floor, Captain Smit Machchhar could feel the aircraft falling. Still fighting back against his first officer, he told himself he had to make one more ultimate effort to open the reinforced cockpit door and call for help.
Speaking from a hospital bed at an Abu Dhabi hospital on 2 October, the Flydubai captain recalled the moment that allowed others to reach him — and help save the flight.
«I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,» he told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a video call.
With his head bandaged and tubes in his nose, he broke down as he recalled the attack.
Machchhar said 17 years of flying taught him to intuitively know what an aircraft was doing. He knew everyone behind the cockpit door was in danger even while injured. When his co-pilot suddenly stabbed and tried to incapacitate him, Machchhar fought back as much as he could and reached for the cockpit door.
Aviation safety rules were changed shortly after 9/11 to prevent anyone from breaching the flight deck from the outside.
He summoned the strength for «one last push» to open it. Passengers and crew were then able to enter and overpower his attacker.
Read more: ‘A lot of blood’: Passengers describe frantic struggle on FlyDubai jet
Learning to look beyond the wounds
Machchhar was initially treated in Saudi Arabia before being airlifted to Abu Dhabi. India’s embassy said on 1 October that he was recovering well, the BBC reported.
For the captain, recovery means trying to see beyond the injuries themselves. He described it as a gradual journey and said he remained confident that he would become «fit and healthy again.»
The Mumbai-born father of two trained in New Zealand and spent more than a decade at SpiceJet before joining Flydubai.
Read more: Smit Machchhar’s unlikely path into aviation
Philip Kean, head of the flight school where Machchhar trained, told AP that pilots learn to take over when a colleague becomes incapacitated. An attack by that colleague is a different situation.
«I don’t think there’s much in the handbook for being stabbed,» he said.
The 30 September flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv eventually landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Israeli authorities say Machchhar’s co-pilot attacked him in an apparent attempt to bring down the aircraft.
