--- title: "Saudi Inquiry Finds Flydubai Co-Pilot Assaulted Captain During Flight" description: "The captain, stabbed in the cockpit, opened the door; passengers subdued the attacker before the plane landed with 174 aboard." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-02T12:37:20Z modified: 2026-10-02T17:20:03Z url: https://rews.cc/a/saudi-inquiry-finds-flydubai-co-pilot-assaulted-captain-befo-7c0ee3 language: en tags: ["aviation", "security", "israel", "india", "dubai", "world"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Saudi Inquiry Finds Flydubai Co-Pilot Assaulted Captain During Flight *The captain, stabbed in the cockpit, opened the door; passengers subdued the attacker before the plane landed with 174 aboard.* By rews desk · October 2, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/saudi-inquiry-finds-flydubai-co-pilot-assaulted-captain-befo-7c0ee3 Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said on Thursday that a co-pilot had assaulted the captain of a Flydubai flight before the plane, bound for Tel Aviv from Dubai, made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia this week. A preliminary inquiry, conducted by Saudi authorities with a United Arab Emirates security team taking part, found that “the pilot was assaulted by his co-pilot, resulting in various injuries to both,” the ministry said. Both pilots were later returned to the Emirates. Flight FZ1073 left Dubai at 7:05 a.m. on Wednesday with 174 people aboard and climbed to 34,000 feet, according to the tracking site Flightradar24. A little more than two hours in, it plunged more than 17,000 feet within minutes. It transmitted the transponder code for a general emergency and, the BBC reported, then switched to the code for a hijacking. The plane landed about an hour after the first distress call in Tabuk, a city in northwestern Saudi Arabia. In the cockpit, the captain was being stabbed. Smit Machchhar, a 39-year-old Indian national, described the fight on Thursday in a video call from his hospital bed with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. “I could feel that the aircraft was plummeting, and I knew this is a last chance to do something. I knew the door was just there,” he said. “I was lying on the floor injured, but I told myself to go for one last push to open the door from inside.” The door let passengers and crew in. Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber, said in a television interview that he and two other passengers forced their way into the cockpit and found the captain bleeding on the floor and the co-pilot at the controls. “I grabbed the terrorist, put him in a hold and first of all pulled him outside,” he said. “I jumped back in there, grabbed the controls, started pulling the controls. I watch Mayday,” he added, referring to a television series about air crashes. A pilot who had been traveling as a passenger then took over, Mr. Hayun said. In the cabin, passengers held the attacker down and tied him with corded headphones while Shota Musayev, a dentist traveling home to Israel from China, treated the captain. “The pilot was in real bad shape with heavy bleeding, particularly from his head,” Mr. Musayev told The Times of Israel. Captain Machchhar said the attacker had called out “kill me, kill me,” adding, “so it’s clear he was suicidal.” President Trump offered his own account on Thursday, telling reporters that an “Israeli plumber” had, “having never flown a plane,” taken the stick and “levelled out the plane before it crashed,” and that the descent was so steep that “the rudder ripped off the back of the plane.” Mr. Hayun’s own telling has a pilot taking over, and no other account of the flight has mentioned rudder damage. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel called Captain Machchhar “a true hero” who showed “extraordinary bravery” and saved the 174 people on board by opening the door. He said one pilot had stabbed the other and apparently then tried to crash the plane, but that it was “too early to say” whether the attack was planned or had an Iranian role, even as some Israeli officials quickly labeled it a “jihadist attack.” The co-pilot has not been charged, and his nationality has not been officially confirmed. He was reportedly hired by Flydubai less than a year ago. The Emirates’ attorney general, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, said investigators would establish the incident’s “circumstances, details, and motives” and verify “the extent of its connection to any terrorist activity or purpose.” The episode has put pilot vetting under scrutiny. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency told Reuters that oversight of Flydubai, including its crews’ fitness to fly, rests with the Emirates’ General Civil Aviation Authority, which requires a Class 1 medical certificate covering physical and mental health. “Those checks are a single snapshot in time and will never uncover whether a person has issues that then manifest in the workplace or flight deck,” Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StrategicAero Research, a London-based aviation consultancy, told Al Jazeera. Israel said it would now vet incoming pilots. “Every pilot that is going to be flying into Israel, we are going to know the pilots’ identities,” said Doron Spielman, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu. Israeli media, citing Transport Minister Miri Regev, have reported that an agreement with the Emirates allows only pilots holding passports from countries with diplomatic relations with Israel to land there. Al Jazeera could not verify the claim. Captain Machchhar spent 11 years at the Indian airline SpiceJet before joining Flydubai in 2022 and has logged nearly 9,750 flying hours. After initial treatment in Tabuk, he was airlifted to Abu Dhabi, where the Indian Embassy said he was “in good health and recovering well.” “I am looking at it as a journey which is slowly going on and will take time,” he said of his wounds, “but I am confident that the recovery will be there and I will become fit and healthy again.” ## Sources - [Flydubai co-pilot 'assaulted' captain before landing, Saudi probe finds](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/1/flydubai-co-pilot-assaulted-captain-before-landing-initial-saudi-probe) — aljazeera.com - [How was the Flydubai co-pilot who attacked his captain cleared to fly?](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/1/how-was-the-flydubai-pilot-who-attacked-his-co-pilot-cleared-to-fly) — aljazeera.com - [12 minutes of madness: How a Flydubai pilot and passengers saved the plane midfall](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/2/12-minutes-of-madness-how-flydubai-pilot-passengers-saved-plane-midfall) — aljazeera.com - [I opened cockpit door while being attacked, says pilot of Dubai-Israel flight](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c639m98gde00o) — bbc.com