DUBAI, Sunday, Oct 18, 2026 — The hero captain of flydubai flight FZ1073 has broken his silence for the first time since his co-pilot attacked him with a crash axe mid-flight in an alleged attempt to bring the aircraft down, describing how he fought through blood and repeated blackouts to summon help into the cockpit.
Indian pilot Smit Machchhar recounted the “traumatic” ordeal to Sky News Arabia from his hospital bed in the United Arab Emirates, saying one thought kept running through his head as the Sept. 30 attack unfolded: “You can’t die like this.”
With his head and one hand bandaged and glasses perched on his nose, Machchhar said his vision was restricted to a few inches after being struck in the back of the head with an emergency crash axe by his 29-year-old Omani co-pilot, Hammam al-Hammami, who had positioned himself behind the captain’s seat. At first he believed a piece of the aircraft’s ceiling had come loose, before several more blows landed and his hand was wounded as he tried to shield himself.
“I Can’t Accept My Death”
Machchhar said his survival came down to getting the reinforced cockpit door open so another pilot who was travelling on board as a passenger could get inside. “I was screaming his name, and I was trying, because the switch that was very close to me to open the door, I was trying to just get help in,” he said. He managed to open it once, but it shut again as blood poured from his wounds.
“I was in and out of consciousness frequently,” he said. “Soon after that, that was the time when I heard the engine sounds going down. And then immediately after that I felt the aircraft going into a dive.”
Speaking to UAE-based The National in a separate conversation on the same day, Machchhar attributed his response to raw instinct. “It was like a survival instinct, which kicked in, and thankfully it did for me and all my other passengers and colleagues,” he said, calling his survival “a miracle” and telling Sky News Arabia: “I can’t accept my death.”
The Flight That Averted Disaster
Investigators say the attack took place aboard flight FZ1073, the Sept. 30 Dubai–Tel Aviv service carrying more than 180 passengers and crew, most of them Israeli. Cabin crew, passengers and the off-duty pilot subdued the co-pilot, and the Boeing 737 made an emergency landing at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia with all on board safe.
Findings released by the UAE attorney general, reported by regional media, indicate the co-pilot had planned to use the aircraft in a suicide attack on the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York. The Emirates is treating the case as an attempted hijacking, and the co-pilot remains under investigation.
Machchhar, still recovering in hospital, paid tribute to the colleague who took the controls during the emergency, calling his actions “commendable.” “It’s something that I’ll keep with me till I die,” the captain said.
