Accused pilot being questioned in Saudi Arabia as Israeli officials investigate if incident was attempted terror attack
One of the pilots of a plane flying from the United Arab Emirates to Israel stabbed his co-pilot and appeared to try to crash the aircraft, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said, as Israeli officials said they were investigating whether the incident was an attempted terror attack on Israelis.
The stabbed pilot was identified as Indian national Captain Smit Machchhar, who was said to have made the emergency call and opened the door to the cockpit, allowing others to rush in and subdue the attacker.
“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, crediting him with saving 174 people onboard.
Damn. Good job, dude.
I remember that FedEx flight where the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer were very severely wounded by an attacker and dying (they did ultimately survive), but still managed to get the plane down.
EDIT: And passengers on the flight, too. Like, barricading the cockpit has often been seen as a security measure, but I’ve commented and pointed out that the window for hijacking a passenger aircraft in the US arguably ended within minutes of the first impacts with the World Trade Center. By that point, it didn’t matter whether you were going to try to claim that you were going to land the aircraft safely — the Flight 93 passengers, which were slightly later than the other planes, knew about the suicide attacks and rushed the cockpit. They learned about the impacts too late to prevent someone from getting control, but early enough to make it impossible to fly a plane to a target. And shortly after that, the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, just got swarmed by passengers the moment it was clear that something was amiss.