Flydubai captain recalls struggle to open cockpit door during attempted terror attack, in first TV interview

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

Indian pilot Smit Machchhar recounts 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.

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

“My vision was restricted to a few inches,” says the pilot, describing the effect of being struck in the back of the head with an emergency axe by his copilot, 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 says.

“But I remember being able to open the door,” he goes 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.”

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.”