The FlyDubai captain told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he knew he had to regain control to save everyone on board, after he was stabbed by his co-pilot and the aircraft plunged into a steep descent.
“I had so many wounds. I had fallen down,” Capt. Smit Machchhar said in the video call that was broadcast live from a hospital in Abu Dhabi. “I was fighting for my life. At one point I realized that if I didn’t get up … then passengers would lose their lives.”
Machchhar was seriously injured in Wednesday’s attack but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter and restrain the attacker as the Boeing 737 descended sharply, witnesses and Israeli authorities said.
The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with 182 people on board, most of them Israeli Jews, was diverted to Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia for an emergency landing.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacker, an Omani national, was arrested in Saudi Arabia and was undergoing interrogation there.
There are reports that copilot, a Muslim, talked about killing Jews.
