Indian pilot recounts midair stabbing heroics in call with PM Modi

Smit Machchhar lay bleeding on the cockpit floor of a Flydubai aircraft bound for Tel Aviv, his co-pilot still attacking him, when he made a decision that would determine whether 174 people lived or died. The Indian captain, wounded and collapsed, felt the plane descending beneath him—a sickening drop of around 17,000 feet. He knew what that meant. In that moment, with his attacker still striking, Machchhar reached for the cockpit door and pulled it open.

Speaking from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi on Friday via video call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Machchhar recounted the attack with the clarity of someone who had already lived through the worst of it. His voice steady, he described the instant he understood the aircraft was going down. "I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed," he said in the nearly ten-minute recording released on Modi's social media channels. "At that time, I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the door was right there."

What happened next was the work of seconds and instinct. Even as the co-pilot continued his assault, Machchhar forced the door open. Passengers and crew rushed in. They overwhelmed the attacker. A second pair of Flydubai pilots—deadheading on the flight—took control of the aircraft and managed to land it in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The plane that had plummeted thousands of feet came back under control. Everyone on board survived.

Machchhar's 17 years in aviation, including 11 as a captain, had given him the muscle memory to act even while his body was failing. He told Modi that his experience had allowed him to understand what was happening to the aircraft even through the fog of injury and shock. During the ordeal, he said, he had recited a Hindu devotional prayer. "I know God himself saved me," he told the prime minister, who is from Machchhar's home state of Gujarat. Modi, in response, praised the pilot's presence of mind, saying it had saved lives and preserved the reputation of Indian aviation.

The attack has since been labeled a terrorist act by UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot had undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination" and appeared "suicidal." US President Donald Trump warned that Iran would face severe consequences if found to be involved. The United Arab Emirates announced it would launch a formal investigation into the incident and its origins.

What remains unclear is the full scope of the co-pilot's motive and any potential external direction or influence. The attack itself is documented—the injuries, the descent, the intervention of passengers, the safe landing. But the question of why, and whether anyone else was involved, is still being pursued by investigators. For now, the story belongs to Machchhar: a pilot who bled and acted, and in doing so, brought a plane full of strangers safely to the ground.