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The FlyDubai hero captain revealed new details of his fight to save the passengers aboard flight FZ1073 in an emotional telephone conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, released by his office on Saturday evening.
Captain Smit Machchhar told Netanyahu he felt he had “one more fight left” in him when in a critical state he reached for the cockpit door once again to save the 174 passengers and 6 crew members, while the co-pilot kept attacking him and putting the aircraft in a steep defence.
He described how the attack started saying that the co-pilot asked to pray in the cockpit which he did not consider an unusual request and “and out of respect for him, I didn’t look back.”
“A few minutes later, I felt a strong impact and thought something had happened to the plane. But then I was hit again and realized it was him. I opened the cockpit door once, but he closed it, and I fell to the floor,” the captain said.
Machchhar said his vision became badly blurred and he felt how the aircraft went into a steep descent. He tried to open the cockpit door once again, but the co-pilot kept closing it while passengers were trying to get in using the access code.
Netanyahu asked him if the door was closed with a pin mechanism and the captain answered that on the inside of the cockpit the door had a twist handle and that from the outside it could be opened with a code.
Machchhar remembered hearing the whooshing sound of the aircraft plunging downwards and the passengers screaming.
Realising what was happening, he told Netanyahu how he reached for the internal twist handle and with “a sharp, quick turn” managed to finally open the door, letting the passengers in who subdued the co-pilot and stabilised the plane.
The Israeli prime minister told him that he is a hero with “an unbelievable courage, inviting him and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to light a celebratory flame on Israel’s next Independence Day, the highest honour usually reserved for Israeli citizens.
“You are a true hero of the brave peoples of India and Israel, and you are a hero of the entire world. I wish you a very speedy and complete recovery,” Netanyahu told captain Machchhar.
Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Yossi Shelley was at his bedside during the call and together with Netanyahu invited Machchhar and his family to visit Israel as soon as he is able, to receive the embrace and love that the entire country wants to give him.
Dubai’s Crown Prince and UAE Minister of Defence Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid also visited Machchhar in hospital hailing the captain’s bravery, stating that he “embodied the highest degrees of courage, responsibility, and care for human life.”
“From us, and from the leadership of the nation, he has our full appreciation and praise. We are proud that he is part of our team, part of the story of our nation and part of what the UAE stands for a nation of compassion, a nation of peace and a nation of life,” Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed said.
In a new development on Sunday, British newspaper The Telegraph reported that the FlyDubai flight copilot, named by multiple media outlets as Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, studied aviation at the UK-based Buckinghamshire New University.
The Telegraph said that during his time at the university, al-Hammami commented in social media posts that women should be “stomped on” and praised giving a woman a “pre-emptive slap.” He also appeared to praise Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, The Telegraph said.
The co-pilot used a crash axe against the captain and “attempted to carry out a terrorist attack”, the United Arab Emirates’ prosecutor general said on Saturday, while the UAE president’s diplomatic adviser Dr Anwar Gargash called the incident “a dangerous terrorist act”.