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TOM HARTLEY, REPORTER: Two pilots incapacitated in the blood-soak galley of a Boeing 737. One is accused of attacking the other in an attempt, it's believed, to take down the aircraft and its 174 passengers including two Australians from Sydney.
Despite pushing off 20 minutes late flight FZ-10-73 left Dubai without issue, bound for Tel Aviv in Israel - a daily service, for the low-cost airline flydubai. Then an hour from its destination the jet plunged suddenly. Dropping more than 17,000 feet - that's about 5,000 metres in just a few minutes. This was filmed from near the back of the cabin.
What they didn't, and couldn't see, was a desperate fight between colleagues in the cockpit. TOM HARTLEY: Shannon Wandmaker is an aviation security specialist. SHANNON WANDMAKER: My understanding is that the first officer has attacked the captain initially with a pocketknife or some kind of knife that he’s been able to get on board.
The captain has been able to somehow get himself out of his seat and open the cockpit door that can't be opened from the outside and that has then allowed passengers and other cabin crew from flydubai to intervene, restrain the first officer and provide aid to the captain. TOM HARTLEY: Being given water, here, is the captain – identified as Smit Machchhar an Indian national.
ASSAF RAJUAN: Anyone who hears me - we need, help,ASSAF RAJUAN: We're landing in Tabuk, apparently in the area of Saudi Arabia. Not familiar with it, unknown. All aboard the flight are healthy and in one piece. TOM HARTLEY: Fatefully among the passengers were two off-duty pilots, who worked for the same carrier.
They were able to control and land the plane, which had been damaged. AIRPORT TOWER: Good evening, flydubai 1073, Ben Gurion Tower. Welcome to Israel. Thank you for bringing our passengers safely back home.
Continue approach, runway 3-0. SHANNON WANDMAKER: One of the things to keep in mind about aircraft like the 737, they’re not designed to dive out of the sky like a fighter jet. So at some point in that dive certain structural components of that aircraft have given way including what appears to be the rudder on the tail. It would have made the aircraft very very difficult to fly.
TOM HARTLEY: On the ground, they were met with relief and the accused attacker, with authorities. He has not been formally identified. YANIV HAYUN : I think it is behind us. It was unpleasant, to say the least.
But thank God he did not succeed. We roughed him up a little bit. TOM HARTLEY: This man claims he levelled the jet before the pilots arrived and knew how to do so because he'd watched air-crash documentaries. EXTRACT FROM AIR CRASH INVESTIGATION: During the descent the first officer suddenly recognises the seriousness of the situation.
YANIV HAYUN: I saw two unmanned control wheels with no pilots and I've watched this program, Air Crash Investigation, and I knew I had to pull. SHANNON WANDMAKER: I've no doubt that this individual has played an absolutely critical role in subduing the first officer.
Whether they played a meaningful role in retaking control of the aircraft, it's difficult to say that would be necessarily true given that's the kind of thing that an extremely highly trained captain would be required to do. TOM HARTLEY: His welcome party included Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who called him a hero.
DONALD TRUMP: But I did speak to Bibi Netanyahu at length about this event, and it seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job. TOM HARTLEY: Investigators in Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are yet to draw conclusions. They will now work to decipher his movements, and motivations.
SHANNON WANDMAKER: The black boxes, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders will be retrieved from the aircraft and they'll be studied very, very closely. And then the investigators will then build a picture of what has happened in the aircraft. At the same time, the UAE authorities will be doing their own investigations about whether it was a radicalization, whether it was a mental health issue, and that'll all come out.
But I wouldn't want people thinking that that's going to happen in the next 24 hours. A commercial flight carrying 174 people and bound for Tel Aviv had to divert after one pilot stabbed the other and "apparently tried to crash the plane". What went on behind the scenes and how did passengers and crew take back control is reported by Tom Hartley. And a warning, this story contains some distressing images.
Hijacking Tel-Aviv Flydubai Pilot-Stabbing
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