By The Daily Wire (World News) | Created at 2026-10-03 21:40:49 | Updated at 2026-10-03 23:49:52
7 hours ago
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Indian pilot Smit Machchhar during a phone conversation on Saturday, hailing him as a “true hero,” not just to India and Israel, but to the whole world.
The two spoke by phone, and Netanyahu shared video of his end of the conversation — Machchhar could be heard on the speaker — and he invited the pilot to come to Israel and light a flame during the nation’s next Independence Day celebration.
“I want to invite you and my dear friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to light a celebratory flame on our next Independence Day,” Netanyahu said. “You are a true hero of the brave peoples of India and Israel, and you are a hero of the entire world.”
After wishing Machchhar a “speedy recovery,” Netanyahu asked to hear some of the details of what had happened onboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073.
“It just was a normal flight, and the the co-pilot offered, I mean, he demand, not demanded, but he wanted to pray, which a lot of locals – they do pray, and which is not out of the ordinary,” Machchhar explained. “But while he was praying, out of respect, I was just looking at the front and not at the back. And suddenly, after I think I would say about four or five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head.”
Machchhar said that he had thought at first that something had gone wrong with the plane — but quickly came to understand that something much worse was taking place.
“My first thought was that there was a catastrophic damage to the aircraft, and something is not right. But then, after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other, and that’s when I realised that it’s not the aircraft; it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me,” he said. “I did try to stop him, but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing, and I was my I was completely blurred out, and at that point, the next thought I, the next feeling that I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down.”
Machchhar said that he had tried to get the cockpit door open, but that the copilot had quickly closed it again. By then, he’d been stabbed several times and was lying on the floor, but he told Netanyahu, “I had that one last fight left in me.”
“Call it personal or call it for people, but let’s say I did it. That if I don’t do it, I’m going to die,” he added. “And that’s when I pushed against everything. I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door. And thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back, took over the control, and the rest is what you know.”
Among those on the other side of that door was Israeli citizen Yaniv Hayoun, who helped to subdue the co-pilot before grabbing the controls himself and pulling the plane out of its dangerous dive.
