One Last Fight Left In Me: Indian Pilot Tells Netanyahu What Happened In The Cockpit
Captain Smit Machchhar has given the first detailed account of what happened in the cockpit of flydubai flight FZ1073, describing a blow to the back of his head, a loss of vision, and a final effort from the cockpit floor to reach the door handle.
By the captain's account, the flight was ordinary until the first officer asked to pray, which Machchhar said was not unusual among local colleagues. Out of respect he kept facing forward rather than turning around. Four or five minutes later came what he called a big blow to the back of his head. His first thought was that the aircraft had suffered catastrophic damage. Then the blows kept coming, and he understood it was the other man in the cockpit.
He tried to stop him. The early blows had left his vision, in his words, completely blurred out. He felt the aircraft going sharply down. He said his memory of the period remains in bits and pieces. He managed to open the door once and the other man shut it again. Then he was lying on the cockpit floor, hearing a whooshing sound and people screaming.
"I had that one last fight left in me," he said. He pushed with everything he had, reached the door and opened it. People were waiting outside and took control.
He also corrected a detail that has circulated widely. Asked by Netanyahu whether he had pulled a pin, Machchhar said there is no pin. From inside, the cockpit door opens with a twist of a knob. From outside it can only be opened with a code, and his colleagues were trying to enter one while the man in the cockpit blocked it. The whole difficulty, he said, was reaching the knob. The twist itself was short and quick.
Netanyahu told him he was amazed at his courage and his coolness of judgement under impossible conditions, called him a hero of India, of Israel and of the world, and said he had saved something larger than the aircraft. He asked that his and his wife's regards be passed to Machchhar's wife, and said the captain, his wife and his children would be welcome in Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a conversation with the Indian pilot from the flight from Dubai, Captain Smit Machchhar:
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) October 3, 2026
"You are a hero for Israel, India, and the entire world. I invite Prime Minister @NarendraModi and you to light a flame on Israeli Independence Day."… pic.twitter.com/e9nSJQ6TRj
On Friday the Israeli prime minister had said the man had undergone Islamist radicalisation and had intended to crash the aircraft with everyone aboard. "We are investigating whether he was sent, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price," he said.
The UAE's Attorney General, Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, has ordered a specialist team to establish whether the attack involved any terrorist activity or purpose or any prior planning, working with Emirati civil aviation authorities and with Saudi investigators who handled the first stage. The UAE has said crimes aboard aircraft registered in the country fall under its courts wherever they occur.
The aircraft left Dubai for Tel Aviv on 30 September with 174 people aboard. It lost close to 14,000 feet in under thirty seconds before diverting to Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia, where both pilots were taken to hospital.
Machchhar has since been flown back to the UAE. The Crown Prince of Dubai, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, visited him on Saturday. India's prime minister telephoned him too.