Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview on Fox News praised Indian pilot Smit Machchhar and described his act of saving passengers despite being stabbed and attacked by an axe as ‘unbelievably courageous’.
“He was bleeding profusely. The plane began to go out of control and began a nosedive. The pilot, the pilot who was there was an Indian pilot with sort of a very badly wounded. He’s fighting, I think, for his life right now.
He said that the pilot was “badly wounded” and is fighting for his life at the moment. Netanyahu said that after Machchhar unlocked the door to the cockpit, despite being gravely injured and covered with blood, passengers on the flight foiled the co-pilot’s attempt to crash the aircraft. But in an act of unbelievable courage, he managed to unlock the door to the cockpit”, Netanyahu said. In a post on X, he said, “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 disaster”. Netanyahu said the pilot’s actions prevented what could have become a major aviation disaster.
Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian citizen, had been working with flydubai, a low-cost carrier owned by the Emirati government, for four years. He had worked for SpiceJet for 10 years prior to that.
