The captain of a flydubai flight who was attacked by a co-pilot who intended to crash the plane has described \u2060blocking axe blows to his head and screaming for help as he reached to open the cockpit door.<\/p>\n
Capt Smit \u2060Machchhar has been hailed \u2060as a \u200bhero<\/a> for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last month, helping to thwart what the UAE \u2060attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who had intended to crash the plane<\/a> into Ben Gurion airport.<\/p>\n Speaking in an interview with \u2060The National newspaper from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, his head and left arm bandaged, Machchhar \u200bsaid that when the first blow landed, \u200che thought something had gone \u201chorribly \u200cwrong with the aircraft structure\u201d before quickly realising he was being attacked and things had \u201ctaken a drastic turn\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe \u200cnext thought was I need to get help in here,\u201d he said. \u201cMy immediate action was to free myself from the seatbelts and I tried to just block the blows as much as I could.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed to his arm that was wounded as he defended himself. \u201cThe blows were coming on the head. Immediately my \u200chand went to the knob which opens the door and [I was] screaming for my colleagues, screaming his name. I believe that was the first time when I \u200blost my consciousness.\u201d<\/p>\n Dubai\u2019s Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, left, visited Capt Smit Machchhar in hospital in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Photograph: Government of Dubai Media Office\/AP<\/p>\n Flight FZ1073 was in Saudi airspace when the co-pilot attacked Machchhar with a crash axe, an item typically kept in the cockpit for emergency use.<\/p>\n The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 ft (4,900m) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were \u2060on board landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia<\/a>. The suspect, an Omani \u200bnational, was transferred to the \u200bUAE, flydubai\u2019s home country.<\/p>\n