Flydubai captain recalls struggle to open cockpit door during attempted terror attack

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The captain of a flydubai flight whose co-pilot attacked him with an axe in a bid to bring down the plane said one thought kept running through his head as the harrowing ordeal unfolded: “You can’t die like this.”

Indian pilot Smit Machchhar recounted the “traumatic” experience to Sky News Arabia in his first interview since the incident late last month in which he, passengers and other crew members were credited with averting disaster on the Tel Aviv-bound flight, which was carrying more than 170 crew members and passengers, most of them Israeli.

With his head and one hand bandaged and glasses perched on his nose, Machchhar spoke from his hospital bed in the UAE.

“My vision was restricted to a few inches,” said the pilot, describing the effect of being struck in the back of the head with an emergency axe by his co-pilot, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, who had positioned himself behind Machchhar’s seat.

At first thinking that a part of the airplane’s ceiling had come loose, he then received several more blows and was wounded in the hand as he tried to shield himself.

Machchhar recalled struggling to open the cockpit door so another pilot who was traveling on board could get inside.

“So I was screaming his name and I was trying, because the switch that was very close to me to open the door, I was trying to just get help in,” he said.

“But I remember being able to open the door,” he went on, only for it to shut again.

“And at that point, I felt all the blood, you know, everything rushing down, my energy, everything, I was just, I was barely staying in consciousness.”

“Soon after that, that was the time when I heard the engine sounds going down. And then immediately after that I felt the aircraft going into a dive.”

According to findings released by the Emirati attorney general, Machchhar’s 29-year-old co-pilot had planned to use the plane to carry out a suicide attack on the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, inspired by the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

He claimed to have acted alone, something investigators are still working to verify.

The prosecutor found that the other pilot on board, having seen the cockpit door open and close “in an unusual manner,” entered the flight deck and, with the help of another crew member and passengers, subdued the co-pilot and regained control of the aircraft.

The jet, which plunged violently during the fray, was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

Machchhar said the way his colleague was able to intervene and safely land the plane was “commendable.”

“It’s something that I’ll keep with me till I die.”