“When I went in, I saw the terrorist on the controls, between the two seats. There were no pilots in the seats.” That is how passenger Yaniv Hayoun described the cockpit of flydubai flight FZ1073 on Wednesday, as the Boeing 737 MAX fell toward the ground over Saudi Arabia with 174 people aboard.
The flight had left Dubai for Tel Aviv at 7:05am and climbed to 34,000 feet, according to Flightradar24. A little over two hours later it began to plunge. Tracking data showed a steep descent, a sharp climb, then a second drop. Al Jazeera put the loss at more than 17,000 feet in about two minutes; The Age, citing the same tracking sites, said 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds.
The captain and the door
Israeli authorities say the co-pilot, an Omani man, turned on the captain with a knife. The captain, Smit Machchhar, is an Indian national, 39 years old. Hurt and on the cockpit floor, he felt the aircraft falling.
“I was lying on the floor injured, but I told myself to go for one last push to open the door from inside,” he later told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call from his hospital bed. “I knew the door was just there.” Cockpit doors stay locked in flight and only the pilots can open them. An aide to Benjamin Netanyahu said Machchhar used “the last moments of his energy” to hit the release.
Netanyahu called him a “true hero” and said he saved 174 lives.
Three passengers go in
Passenger Tzvika Manes told Israel’s Channel 12 that his wife was taking their young daughter to the toilet at the front when she heard screams. The captain fell out of the cockpit into the cabin as the co-pilot kept stabbing him. Manes pulled his daughter out of the toilet and went forward. With Hayoun and Assaf Rajwan, he fought his way in.
Hayoun grabbed the co-pilot, who appeared to be trying to wreck the controls, put him in a hold and dragged him out. Then he went back in. “I jumped back in there, grabbed the controls, started pulling the controls,” he said. How did he know what to do? “I watch Mayday,” he said, naming a Canadian documentary series about air disasters. Donald Trump, praising him, called him an Israeli plumber who had never flown a plane.
Another pilot, travelling in the cabin, soon reached the cockpit. “The plane started levelling out a little more, and then the pilot told me he was taking over,” Hayoun said. The Age reported there were two pilots on board, unnamed, and that some accounts described them as a South African and a New Zealander.
The passengers tied the co-pilot up with headphone cords. Manes said it took 20 to 25 minutes. Rajwan said they held him for 55 minutes. “Life is stronger than everything, and we decided to fight for it,” Rajwan said.
A dentist in the aisle
Dr Shota Musayev, an Israeli dentist flying home from China, ran toward the screaming within ten seconds. “The pilot was in real bad shape with heavy bleeding, particularly from his head,” he told The Times of Israel. “I was the only doctor on the plane, and eventually, I managed to stop the bleeding and stabilise his blood pressure.” He believes that saved the captain’s life.
Landing at Tabuk
The transponder first sent the general emergency code 7700 at 05:28 GMT, near the Saudi-Jordan border. Seven minutes later it switched to 7500, the code for unlawful interference. The jet levelled out near 15,000 feet at 05:33 GMT, turned briefly into Jordanian airspace, then headed back. Air traffic control in Tabuk received a distress call at 05:44 GMT, and the aircraft landed there nearly four hours after takeoff.
Passenger Daniel told Channel 12 that the off-duty pilots locked themselves in the cockpit. Then the cabin heard one speak: they were going to land. Saudi soldiers, nurses and doctors met the plane. Lital Shahar, travelling with her four daughters, said the survivors owed their lives to “two miracles”: Israelis who went into the cockpit, and pilots on board who could land the plane.
Machchhar was treated in Tabuk, then airlifted to Abu Dhabi, where the Indian embassy said he was in good health and recovering. He told Modi he has flown for 17 years and “can tell what is happening to the plane even with my eyes closed.”
Sources
- ‘I grabbed the terrorist’: How hero passengers helped save flight FZ1073
- 12 minutes of madness: How Flydubai pilot, passengers saved plane midfall
