{"id":417607,"date":"2026-10-03T10:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T10:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/417607\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T10:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T10:02:16","slug":"flydubai-pilot-smit-machchhar-recounts-attack-onboard-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/417607\/","title":{"rendered":"FlyDubai pilot Smit Machchhar recounts attack onboard flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

FlyDubai pilot hailed hero after onboard attack: \ufeff’I couldn’t let everybody else die’<\/p>\n

\"DefaultCNN \u2014<\/p>\n

Smit Machchhar, the hero FlyDubai captain who fought off a savage attack by his copilot, kept fighting because he could not “let everybody else die,” he said in his first public remarks since Wednesday’s suspected hijacking attempt.<\/p>\n

Related video: Brother of FlyDubai passenger speaks about flight where captain was stabbed<\/p>\n

“In that moment, I was fighting for my life,” Machchhar told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call on Friday. “Because I had fallen down\u2026 I was so severely wounded that I had fallen down\u2026 at that time, I was thinking, what if I don’t get up?<\/p>\n

A horrific mid-air catastrophe<\/a> on a plane heading to Tel Aviv was averted in a stunning turn of events on Wednesday when passengers and crew bravely rushed into the cockpit and regained control of the aircraft.<\/p>\n

Machchhar said he was on the ground in the cockpit when he realized the plane was going down.<\/p>\n

“And I knew in that moment \u2013 one last push, Smit! Just do it. The door is right there,” he told Modi. “And even at that time, he was beating me up.”<\/p>\n

“And then I just opened it \u2026 and then everybody came,” he said, referring to several other passengers who then rushed into the cockpit and restrained his attacker.<\/p>\n

“I was doing this for my life, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t let everybody else die.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FlyDubai pilot hailed hero after onboard attack: \ufeff’I couldn’t let everybody else die’ CNN \u2014 Smit Machchhar, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15288,1324,77895,160124,1555,20334,165260,165264,165265,269,1210,165261,29692,102600,139,141,140,10258,97480,165262,165263,165266,2393,2486],"class_list":["post-417607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-attack","tag-brother","tag-cockpit","tag-csnd","tag-event","tag-flight","tag-flydubai","tag-flydubai-passenger","tag-flydubai-pilot-smit-machchhar","tag-israel","tag-life","tag-machchlar","tag-moment","tag-nd","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-plane","tag-related-video","tag-smit","tag-smit-machchhar","tag-stunning-turn","tag-time","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}