Benjamin Netanyahu praised “superhero” passengers who stopped an attempted hijacking that left a Flydubai pilot with devastating injuries.
The Israeli Prime Minister, 75, detailed the Wednesday attack during a Thursday appearance on “Fox and Friends,” describing how Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was stabbed in the head and had his arm “basically split in two” during the assault. “He was stabbed in the head, and his arm was basically split in two, and there was a lot of blood,” Netanyahu said of the captain’s condition.
The co-pilot, whom Netanyahu described as an “Islamist radical” on a suicide mission, targeted Machchhar during the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The attacker had reportedly worked for Flydubai for less than a year and had undergone what Netanyahu called “Islamist radical indoctrination” before the incident.
With the captain nearly unconscious and covered in blood, the Boeing 737 Max plummeted 17,000 feet in approximately two minutes with no one at the controls. Passengers, including a plumber, rushed to intervene as the aircraft descended toward the Arabian desert. They subdued the co-pilot and restrained him using a headphone cord.
“These are ordinary civilians, you know Israeli citizens, who became heroes — superheroes,” Netanyahu said. “They got control over the situation and we could be sitting today in a 9-11 tragedy, with bodies scattered in the desert.”
Two relief pilots who were scheduled to skipper a subsequent flight were among the passengers on board. They took over the controls and stabilized the aircraft for an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
A dentist who was also flying as a passenger rushed to assist Machchhar, who was seen in footage lying on his back in the galley with an oxygen mask over his mouth, a blood-spattered wall beside him.
The bound co-pilot, clad in a blood-soaked pilot’s uniform, repeatedly begged the crew to kill him during the aftermath. “It’s clear he was suicidal. That’s not a question. It was clear he was going to down that plane,” Netanyahu told Fox.
Netanyahu could not confirm whether the attacker had connections to Iran or another terrorist organization. It also remained unclear whether the co-pilot used a knife he had smuggled aboard or an axe from the plane’s standard equipment to carry out the assault.
The Israeli leader noted that his country maintains restrictions preventing pilots from nations without diplomatic relations, such as Oman, from flying into Israel. “Obviously there was a loophole here, and we’re taking care of that, among other things,” he said.
Netanyahu expressed visible astonishment at the passengers’ bravery throughout the ordeal. “This is Hollywood on steroids. You can’t make this up. You can’t believe that it actually happens in real life — but it did,” he said.