Dentist's 45-minute fight to save stabbed pilot during foiled terror attack

Dr. Shota Musaev was settling into a connecting flight from China through Dubai when the screams started. The 47-year-old dentist from Holon, just south of Tel Aviv, heard the commotion and then the call for a doctor. What he found in the narrow space near the aircraft exit was a captain bleeding heavily from his head and left hand, the victim of what authorities would later describe as an attempted terrorist attack.

On September 30, Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv had turned into a scene of violence when the co-pilot used an emergency crash axe to attack Captain Smit Machchhar in the cockpit. The captain, an Indian national living in Dubai, had been stabbed repeatedly. As passengers and reserve pilots moved to regain control of the aircraft, Musaev became the man standing between Machchhar and death.

For 45 minutes, Musaev applied constant pressure to the wounds using T-shirts, requesting ice from the flight crew when the bleeding refused to slow. The cuts were deep—each time he lifted the fabric to check, blood would flow again. He kept the pressure steady and cool, never hard enough to cause more damage, never letting up. The captain was conscious but fading. Musaev kept him talking, asking about his children, their names, anything to keep him awake and aware. "Please don't sleep, we need you," he told Machchhar. "Don't be afraid, you will go back to your family, we are landing soon."

Machchhar spoke of his pain, of the heat in his hands, of his fear. He asked for help easing the agony. He said his God was with him, that he wanted to live, that he did not want to die on this plane. Musaev monitored everything—the captain's pulse, the color of his lips, whether he was still speaking. When Machchhar's vital signs dropped dangerously low, Musaev elevated his feet. When his lips turned blue, Musaev told the stewards they had to land immediately. There was not much time left.

While administering care, Musaev learned that the co-pilot had damaged the cockpit console. He watched as two standby pilots entered the cockpit with a passenger to stabilize the aircraft. A small group of other passengers kept watch over the cabin, scanning for signs of additional attackers, fearing the violence was not over. Musaev and the others remained at the cockpit entrance, vigilant, uncertain whether they had truly contained the threat.

When the plane touched down in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Musaev handed the captain over to waiting medical personnel with a simple farewell: "Good luck my friend. Everything will be good." But the ordeal had left its mark. In the days that followed, Musaev and his wife slept only two hours each night. His weight dropped three kilograms. The weight of what had happened was just beginning to settle.

Musaev spoke of the collective effort that had saved the flight—the woman passenger who first heard something wrong in the cockpit and raised the alarm, the crew members who restrained the co-pilot using headphone cables, the reserve pilots who steadied the plane, the passengers who handed him T-shirts to stanch the bleeding. He called them all heroes. He said the captain was a hero too, for fighting to stay alive. "It's karma," Musaev reflected. "He saved our lives and we saved his life." He insisted he had done nothing special, only stopped the bleeding and stabilized a pulse. But without that intervention, without those 45 minutes of pressure and vigilance and will, Captain Smit Machchhar would not have survived. The UAE's Attorney General has said investigations into the incident as a suspected terrorist attack remain ongoing.