'He’s stabbing the pilot': How terror unfolded on Flydubai Flight 1073 - National Post
A screengrab taken from a video shows passengers inside the rerouted Flydubai flight FZ 1073, ahead of its departure to Tel Aviv from Saudi Arabia's Tabuk airport on Sept. 30, 2026. Photo by AFPTV/AFP via Getty ImagesArticle contentSix-year-old airline passenger Nina Manes needed to pee as the Flydubai airplane she was on approached Jordanian airspace on its way from Dubai to Tel Aviv. Asking her mother to take her to the toilet was a great stroke of fortune — they stumbled upon an unfolding midair drama and sounded an alarm that helped save them all from plunging to their deaths.
Nina was guided by her mother, Tali, to the front of the plane, Wednesday, just as one pilot lunged to attack the other in an apparent attempt to bring down the plane. Attracted by shouting, she looked inside the cockpit.
“There was blood all over the cockpit and very, very sharp fighting moves,” Tali told Israeli media. “I screamed, ‘He’s stabbing the pilot, he’s stabbing the pilot, come help!’ People looked at me and didn’t understand.”
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Her shouts of alarm triggered an incredible effort by passengers and crew to save the plane and themselves, according to witness accounts.
Here is what witnesses say happened.
Flydubai Flight FZ1073 was carrying 174 passengers and eight crew members from Dubai, a city in the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf, to Tel Aviv, a city on Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The daily flight is supposed to be a non-stop trip of 2,130 kilometres, taking about three and a half hours.
With an hour left before landing, the trip turned terrifying.
What the mother and daughter saw in the cockpit, officials say, was a co-pilot attacking his fellow pilot, stabbing him in an apparent fight for control of the plane. Their screams brought passengers running,
The injured captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian man now hailed as a hero, described on Friday his desperate fight inside the cockpit.
“I was fighting for my life,” he said in Gujarati. “I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed. 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,” he said.
