After 9/11, cockpit doors were built to stay shut. At 33,000 feet, a wounded Indian captain from Mumbai made the one call no rulebook trains for.

Mumbai pilot stabbed mid-air opens cockpit door, helps save 174 lives on flydubai flight to Tel Aviv

Mumbai 03 october –

For most of the flight, FZ1073 was just another evening service from Dubai to Tel Aviv. On Wednesday, 30 September, that changed somewhere over Jordan. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 sent out an emergency signal, then the hijack code, and Israel is reported to have scrambled fighter jets. Inside the cockpit, according to passengers and Israeli officials, the first officer had turned on the captain with a knife. The captain was Smit Machchhar, a 39-year-old pilot from Mumbai.

What happened next has been pieced together from passenger accounts and official statements. A woman waiting near the front lavatory heard a commotion from the cockpit and told a flight attendant and her husband, Tzvika Manes, who was seated in the front row. Moments later he saw the cockpit door open and Captain Machchhar fall out, with the first officer on top of him. The aircraft had already begun to dive and had dropped thousands of feet. Passengers and crew rushed in and overpowered the attacker.

Reports say the captain, bleeding heavily from deep cuts to his head and hands, had pressed the cockpit door release himself. After 9/11, cockpit doors on commercial jets were built to stay locked against anyone trying to get in. Machchhar, alone with the attacker, needed exactly the opposite. Opening that door is what let other people reach the flight deck. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has credited him with saving 174 lives, saying he fought back despite his injuries and made it possible for the attacker to be overpowered.

A doctor travelling on the flight later told Israeli media that when he reached the cockpit, the captain was in terrible condition but conscious and talking. Machchhar told them he was 39 and had two children. Two pilots who were on board as passengers then took control of the aircraft and landed it at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. The 174 people on board included 27 children. Most were unharmed, though one passenger was taken to hospital and some needed bandages for minor injuries.

Flydubai has so far described the incident only as an altercation on the flight deck. The airline said it was investigating, had informed the Israeli authorities, and sent another aircraft to Tabuk to bring the passengers onward. The more serious claims have come from elsewhere. Netanyahu said the co-pilot, an Omani national, stabbed the captain and apparently tried to crash the plane. He later told Fox News the man had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, called the incident an attempted terror attack. None of this has been independently verified, and no motive has been officially established. The co-pilot was arrested by Saudi authorities, and Israel, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the United States are reportedly involved in the investigation.

Captain Machchhar was taken to a hospital in Tabuk, where he underwent surgery. The Indian embassy in Riyadh has said his condition is stable.

Back in Mumbai, his story has already reached his housing society and neighbourhood. Posters praising him have gone up, and a local BJP councillor, Susham Sawant, has met his family and offered help. People who know him describe him as calm and level-headed, someone who stays steady when things go wrong.

His career path was not a straight line. According to reports, he first studied for his family’s textile business. During a management course he attended an aviation seminar, which changed his plans, and he went on to train as a pilot in New Zealand. He joined SpiceJet in 2011, working his way up to line training captain and senior commander, and moved to flydubai in 2022 as a direct-entry captain. He has over 13 years of commercial flying experience and roughly 10,000 hours on the 737.

The investigation is continuing, and the questions about why it happened remain open. What is already on record is that a wounded pilot, in a locked cockpit at 33,000 feet, found a way to get help to the people flying with him, and every one of them got off that aircraft alive.

RootsAlert will update this report as more details emerge.