FlyDubai Pilot Describes Desperate Fight to Save Lives

In a video call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi from a hospital, an Indian pilot who was stabbed by his co-pilot described a desperate struggle to save a plane carrying 182 people. FlyDubai pilot Captain Smit Machchhar told Modi that he was on the cockpit floor, badly injured, when he realized the plane was rapidly losing altitude and he had to act before passengers died, the BBC reports. "I was lying on the floor injured but I told myself to go for one last push to open the door from inside," he said. "I was of course fighting for my own life but at the same time I knew I was not going to let others die."

• Machchhar said that even on the floor, he knew what was happening with the Boeing 737, which plunged over 17,000 feet in less than two minutes, the AP reports. "I have been flying planes for 17 years and serving as a captain for the last 11 years," he said. "I can sense exactly what is happening with the aircraft even with my eyes closed. When I was down, I could feel that the aircraft was plummeting."

After he managed to open the cockpit door, passengers and crew subdued the attacker. The plane, en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, was diverted safely to Tabuk in northwest Saudi Arabia. An Israeli plumber says he pulled the plane out of its dive before two crew members, described by officials as pilots in training, took over. Hailed as a hero by Modi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Machchhar was later airlifted to Abu Dhabi, where India's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates said Thursday that he was "in good health and recovering well."

"I am not looking at this wound like a wound because that would make my recovery even more difficult," Machchhar said. "I am looking at it as a journey which is slowly going on and will take time, but I am confident that the recovery will be there and I will become fit and healthy again." Philip Kean, CEO of the flight school in New Zealand where Machchhar trained, says training doesn't cover what the pilot experienced Wednesday. "I don't think there's much in the handbook for being stabbed," Kean tells the AP. "You're friends and you're flying together," he says. "Nobody would expect … a person to have a go at you like that."