‘I couldn’t let everybody else die’: Hero captain who saved 174 passengers after being stabbed by co-pilot breaks silence
The hero Flydubai captain who fought off a savage knife attack by his co-pilot has spoken out for the first time since Wednesday's suspected hijacking attempt.
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Smit Machchhar told India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he kept fighting after being stabbed multiple times because he could not “let everybody else die".
“In that moment, I was fighting for my life,” Mr Machchhar told the PM in a video call on Friday.
“I was so severely wounded that I had fallen down […] at that time, I was thinking, what if I don’t get up?”
The Indian national, one of the two pilots of the Flydubai jet headed to Tel Aviv, heroically managed to let passengers into the cockpit to take over the controls despite his wounds.
The captain of more than 13 years was hailed by Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a "true hero" for helping to foil the attempted hijacking.
Mr Machchhar was badly injured while trying to fend off the attacker.
Footage from onboard showed a gruesome scene, with blood smeared across the cockpit and the seriously wounded pilot lying on the floor next to his attacker.
Mr Machchhar told the Indian prime minister he was on the ground in cockpit when he realised the plane was going down.
“And I knew in that moment – one last push, Smit! Just do it. The door is right there,” he said.
“And even at that time, he was beating me up.”
“And then I just opened it […] and then everybody came,” he said, referencing the passengers who rushed into the cockpit and restrained his attacker.
“I was doing this for my life, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t let everybody else die.”
My salute to the Indian pilot Captain Smit Machchhar for his extraordinary bravery.
— Benjamin Netanyahu - בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) September 30, 2026
Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air…
Modi praised Mr Machchhar, telling the pilot that his “courage, patience and quick thinking… saved the lives of so many people.”
“You yourself were fighting the battle of life and death,” Modi said.
Machchhar is recovering at a hospital in Abu Dhabi, after initially being treated for his injuries in Saudi Arabia where the diverted plane was forced to make an emergency landing.
The father of two had suffered “massive blood loss” and was “severely wounded,” dentist Shota Musaev, a passenger on the flight who helped treat him, said.
Two off-duty pilots on board managed to take over the controls and carry out the emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after passengers overpowered the attacker as he attempted to crash the FlyDubai jet.
One pilot, who is British and another, described as "European," were in transit on the flight when the attempted hijacking took place.
The plane had taken off from Dubai and was due to land in Tel Aviv.
It was eventually diverted while flying over Jordanian airspace when a general emergency signal was flagged.
It was then landed at the civilian and military base of Tabu in the kingdom, with 174 passengers on board.