Trump marvels at plumber who pulled flydubai plane out of dive

US President Donald Trump said he spoke Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the alleged attempted crash of the flydubai flight full of Israelis and that it seems the copilot “was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack-job.”

Trump said he was told by Netanyahu and others about how “an Israeli plumber, never flew a plane… saw what was happening,” tackled the suspect, “ripped this guy out of his seat” and then “took the stick, lifted it up, and leveled out the plane before it crashed.”

“I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got from Bibi and from a couple of other people,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Yaniv Hayun’s heroic actions.

“When I asked how he did that,” Trump said, Netanyahu explained that the heroic plumber “watches that show Air Disasters.”

“They said [the copilot] wanted to crash the plane, but they don’t have that kind of [definitive] information,” he added.

The struggle on flight FZ1073 began when the copilot stabbed the pilot, Indian national Smit Machchhar, and sent the jet plunging nearly 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) in less than 30 seconds. Passengers and crew were able to rush into the cockpit, where they overcame the assailant.

Hayun, one of three Israeli passengers who helped subdue the attacker, recounted how he entered the cockpit, dragged the suspected assailant away from the controls and then helped stabilize the nosediving aircraft.

Meeting Netanyahu at Ben Gurion Airport after returning to Israel, Hayun said he and another man forced their way into the cockpit, where the wounded pilot was lying near the door.

“When I went in, I saw the terrorist on the controls, between the two seats. There were no pilots in the seats,” he recounted. “I grabbed the terrorist, put him in a hold, and first of all pulled him outside,” he said.

Hayun said he called other Israelis on the flight to help hold back the man before returning to the cockpit as the aircraft was tilting sharply.

“I jumped back in there, grabbed the controls, started pulling the controls,” he said, explaining that he pulled backward and quipping that he knew what to do because “I watch ‘Mayday,’” referring to a Canadian documentary television program that examines air crashes.

Two off-duty pilots who were among the passengers then took over and eventually made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The Israeli passengers were later brought to Israel on a specially arranged flight.

The incident is still under investigation.