Israeli passengers who subdued a knife-wielding co-pilot on a flydubai flight say crew members then demanded the attacker be freed.
Banking executive Tzvika Manes, 40, and real estate professional Daniel Schlichter, 59, both described the midair confrontation in exclusive interviews, detailing how cabin staff clashed with the civilians who had just saved the aircraft. The two men were returning from family vacations in Japan when the April incident unfolded on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
Manes was traveling with his wife and three daughters, aged 11, 7, and 6, when the co-pilot, identified by The Wall Street Journal as Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, began attacking Indian Capt. Smit Machchhar with a crash ax. The seriously injured captain managed to open the cockpit door, allowing Manes, plumber Yaniv Hayoun, and fellow Israeli Asaf Rajuan to rush in and confront the assailant.
The trio overpowered al-Hammami and restrained him face-down with zip ties, then headphone wires that Schlichter collected from passengers. As he was subdued, the attacker cried out repeatedly, Manes recalled.
“Kill me, kill me,” Hayoun heard him say, apparently because he had failed in his mission.
Then came the unexpected second confrontation. Some crew members began insisting the restrained man be released, a demand that immediately put the Israeli passengers on high alert.
“They were asking us to untie the terrorist — we had no idea why,” Manes said.
“They were saying to free the terrorist — we got instantly suspicious of them,” Schlichter added, noting he had been seated in the second row near the cockpit when the chaos began.
The Israeli passengers refused. An argument erupted, with crew members telling them they lacked authority to hold the man.
“They said, ‘You are not God, you are not going to kill him,'” Manes recalled. “We didn’t want to kill him, we just wanted him not to kill us.”
Despite the tension, the civilians provided the wounded co-pilot with an oxygen mask. “We wanted him to live so he could be investigated,” Schlichter explained.
A power struggle followed. Crew members insisted they alone should remain in the area directly in front of the cockpit, but the Israelis, fearing possible collusion in the attack, ordered the stewards to leave and take seats in the middle of the aircraft.
“We told them, ‘Now the policy is we’re in charge and you do what we say,'” Manes said. “We didn’t know what to think, we were in a suspicious mode for every steward.”
Schlichter and other passengers escorted the crew members to seats in the fifth or sixth row, away from the cockpit. “We shouted at them and told them to sit down,” he said.
The trio then recruited a “big guy” to guard the cockpit entrance. By this point, reserve pilots seated in the back had already entered and taken control of the aircraft. Hayoun had managed to stabilize the nosediving plane using techniques he learned from the TV show “Air Disasters.”
After being seated, the crew gradually recognized the extraordinary circumstances, Schlichter noted, and began tending to traumatized passengers with blankets and water. No crew members have been accused of conspiring with al-Hammami.
The violence had erupted suddenly at cruising altitude. Machchhar, gravely wounded, somehow opened the cockpit door before the three Israelis reached him. The fight was brutal and chaotic, Manes described.
“Punches were flying, we were kicking him, we didn’t know if he still had his knife, we couldn’t see it,” he said. “None of us were fighters or heroes, we were just normal guys who wanted to save our families.”
The aircraft had plummeted 17,000 feet in moments. Schlichter, a father of two with two granddaughters, believed he was about to die.
“It was the longest minute I’ll ever have in my life, I remember everything, I remember clearly thinking about 9/11, then I thought about my children, my family, how awful it would be for them to hear what happened,” he said.
Manes, CEO of Barak Capital Underwriting, Israel’s largest investment bank, sustained bruises across his body. The physical sensation of the dive was unlike anything he had experienced.
“The G-Force was like something I never felt like in my life, it felt like everything was soaking, it was a crazy feeling,” he said.
The emotional trigger that propelled him forward came from his own children. “When I heard my daughters crying ‘Father I don’t want to die’ — that was the trigger for me to run and fight, I wasn’t thinking of anything, it was just fight or flight,” Manes said.
After the plane landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Manes remained with the restrained co-pilot until authorities took over. Only then did he embrace his daughters and reassure them. “I hugged my daughters and told them they were going to be OK, and that they are heroes,” he said.
The aftermath was emotionally wrenching for many aboard. Some passengers suffered panic attacks; others wept openly. The trauma ran so deep that numerous travelers refused to board a replacement flydubai flight back to Israel. “Many wouldn’t step foot on the plane until they were personally told by the Mossad that the pilots had been cleared,” Manes said.
Both men marveled at the improbable chain of events that allowed survival. “Statistically this kind of miracle can not be happening, the chance that each one of us, especially would be on the same second where they had to be, I can’t even fathom how unlikely it is,” Schlichter said.
“It was sounds you only hear in a movie,” he added.
Manes attributed their survival to higher intervention. “I believe that definitely we had divine protection,” he said. “Someone up there is watching over us.”
Flydubai declined to comment on the crew’s behavior, citing the ongoing investigation, and stated it remains fully committed to supporting authorities and regulators.