We now have many more astonishing details on yesterday’s miraculous story of the thwarted terrorist attack on the Tel Aviv-bound FlyDubai Flight 1073.
Israel’s defense minister called it an "attempted jihadist terrorist attack." The co-pilot, who was from Oman, knifed the pilot and attempted to seize control of the plane and crash it, killing over 170 people aboard. The bleeding pilot, Indian national Capt. Smit Machchhar, managed to open the cockpit door and brave passengers saw what was happening and rushed in to stop it.
Heroic Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun was first in and saw the co-pilot trying to destroy the controls so the plane couldn’t be saved. He put the co-pilot in a chokehold, dragged him out so that other passengers could subdue him, then rushed back in and pulled back on the controller to stop the plane’s plummet (luckily, he has an aviation background.) It was estimated that the plane was just 40 seconds away from irreversible catastrophe.
Miraculously, the passengers included two other pilots who were heading back to Tel Aviv, and they took over and landed the plane safely. We’ve also learned that there were four Americans on the flight.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot somehow used a loophole to get past a ban on pilots from nations that don’t have diplomatic relations with Israel. He said the co-pilot is being interrogated and it appears that he went through “Islamist radical indoctrination.” He expects to know within a few days whether he has ties to Iran.
The attacker must’ve found a pretty big loophole. A fellow FlyDubai pilot said his colleagues knew him as a religious extremist who exhibited “very strange behavior” that was out of step with his surroundings, such as praying a lot and refusing to shake hands with women. He said, “There is no other way to put it, we hired the services of a terrorist and nearly caused the deaths of 180 people.”
One passenger on the flight described the ordeal as “like September 11 is happening again,” and said it was hard to imagine just how heroic the Israeli passengers who rushed the cockpit were. Another said they “went into action mode.” He added, "I just want to say something that frustrated me: while everything was happening, I was one of the only people who could communicate externally because I had reception. I was getting messages from people saying the global media was reporting it as a fight between two pilots, while I was reporting from inside that it was a terror attack. It was really frustrating that the media's default reaction was that it couldn't be a terror attack, even though it clearly was.
"It feels like there is a sentiment where the global media allows it to happen—that if it's related to Israelis or Jews, it's treated differently than any other country. That’s how it felt to me."
He’s right, and we wouldn’t be surprised if the media soon starts describing this as an attempted Israeli genocide against an innocent Omani co-pilot.
