‘Had one last fight left in me’: Flydubai captain tells Netanyahu that copilot was praying before attacking him

Indian flydubai pilot Smit Machchhar tells Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dramatic details about the attack by his Omani co-pilot, and says that Hamam al-Hammami asked to pray during Wednesday’s flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

“Suddenly, after four or five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head,” Machchhar says.

“My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft.

“But after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other,” says the pilot, who is in the UAE recovering from his wounds. “That’s when I realized it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

Machchhar says he tried to stop the copilot, but he could barely see anything because of the blows to his head: “I was completely blurred out.”

“The next feeling that I had is that the aircraft is sharply going down,” he continues, cautioning that his memory is still spotty.

Machchhar says that his initial attempt to open the cockpit door was thwarted by Hammami. While lying on the cockpit floor, he remembers hearing people screaming.

“I had one last fight left in me,” he says. “Call it personal or call it for people, but let’s say, I did that. If I don’t do it, I’m going to die. That’s when I pushed against everything, I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door and people were waiting to pounce back, and take control, and the rest is what you know sir.”