The plane was high over Saudi Arabia. Captain Smit Machchhar was flying it. His first officer, the second pilot, asked to pray in the cockpit. The cockpit is the small room at the front where the pilots sit. Machchhar said yes. Out of respect, he did not look back. After four or five minutes, he felt a heavy hit on the back of his head.
It was 30 September 2026. The plane was Flydubai Flight 1073. It was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv with 174 passengers and six crew. Machchhar is from India. The first officer was Hamam al-Hammami from Oman. Passengers say he hit the captain with an axe. Then he sent the plane down very fast.
The plane fell 16,000 feet in about 30 seconds.
In the cockpit, the co-pilot hit Machchhar again and again. The captain almost could not see. But he reached for the door one more time. He said he had “one more fight left” in him.
He opened the door, and passengers came in to help. One passenger pulled the co-pilot out. Others fought with him until he stopped.
Two other pilots were on the plane as passengers. They were there because they had to fly the plane back from Tel Aviv to Dubai. They took over the plane. After ten minutes or more, it was flying straight again. A passenger, Daniel Schlichter, said the first of the two pilots acted like a hero.
Then the pilots said nothing for a long time, and Schlichter was worried. After about 45 minutes, they said the plane was going to land in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. They said everything was OK.
The plane landed nearly four hours after it left Dubai. Doctors were waiting. All 180 people on the plane lived. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the captain. On 2 October, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him in hospital.
On 3 October, a top UAE official called it a “terrorist attack”. Flydubai says people are still looking at what happened.
Later, Machchhar talked to Netanyahu on the phone. He said he knew he could not let the passengers die.