Smit Machchhar should not be alive. Neither should the 170-plus people who boarded his FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv. His co-pilot, still maddeningly unidentified, stabbed him in a sneak attack, a terror plot to hijack the 737 and deliberately murder every person on board. And even after Machchhar heroically opened the cockpit door in the midst of the attack, it seemed much more likely that he would succumb to the wounds inflicted by a cowardly terrorist dressed in FlyDubai's uniform.
Instead, Machchhar has defied the odds as well as his perfidious co-pilot, surviving to tell the world what happened. Machchhar has made his first public comment, speaking with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the attack:
Indian PM Narendra Modi video calls Captain Smit Machchhar, praised his courage, composure; Says the country is praying for him after he risked his life to save others. The Indian pilot helped saved lives of over 150 people in the Fly Dubai flight from UAE to Israel
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) October 2, 2026
Full Video: pic.twitter.com/bg3PvogzUP
In a call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Indian airline captain who helped thwart Wednesday’s attack on a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv recounted how he pushed the cockpit door open while fighting for his life after his copilot stabbed him and the plane began to plummet. ...
“I was trying to save my own life, but I knew I was not going to let others die,” Machchhar said during a call from his hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, in a 10-minute video posted by Modi to social media on Friday.
“I had suffered so many injuries that I had collapsed,” said Machchhar, with his head bandaged and tubes in his nose, before breaking down as he recalled the attack.
“I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the door was right there,” he said. “I was being hit even then, but I just opened the door and everyone came in.”
That's what makes Machchhar a hero. He knew he might die, but he knew everyone else would if he didn't make that final push, even if it cost him his own life.
Meanwhile, investigators from several countries want to know why the copilot was allowed on the flight, and how he got a knife onto the flight deck. Even the Wall Street Journal, which like most American media outlets downplayed the initial report, has started reporting on suspicions of an "inside job" in Dubai:
Aviation experts consider Dubai International Airport to have high security standards. It was consistently the world’s busiest for international travel and connected fliers from risky countries such as Afghanistan and Iran. It uses facial recognition to identify passengers and scans carry-on luggage coming in and out of the country.
Pilots who have regularly flown from Dubai recounted strict searches through metal detectors that have led security staff to confiscate everything from selfie sticks to hair spray to cups of coffee. Air regulations ban all blades with sharp points and typically blunt knives longer than six centimeters.
“Dubai is high-spec and a key global hub. It compares well to many of the top airports in the world,” Horowitz said. “But that doesn’t rule out insider jobs or a broader lapse in security.”
An Israeli official said the country has long pressed Dubai airport officials to strengthen security for flights heading its way. It stopped its own airlines from flying between Dubai and Tel Aviv for several months this year amid worries about security gaps and the risks posed by the war against Iran.
Some people may think that pilots get bypassed for screening. That's not true in Dubai, and it's not true in the US either. And that matters when determining what happened in this case, because the Israelis had demanded another level of pilot screening for flights coming to Tel Aviv: no pilots from countries that refuse to recognize Israel. No one has yet explained how an Omani pilot got assigned to this flight, an assignment that clearly defied that agreement. Add that to the question of how the copilot got a knife on the plane with these other tight restrictions in place, and "inside job" starts sounding less like a conspiracy theory and more like an actual conspiracy at FlyDubai.
This terror attack has ended the connections between Israel and Dubai for the moment. That leaves thousands of Israelis stranded in the UAE. El Al had prepared to start repatriating them today, but the UAE revoked its permit to land in Dubai:
El Al Israel Airlines has been forced to cancel its rescue flights to Dubai, the company announced on Friday morning, after Israeli airlines' permission to land there was revoked by the authorities.
El Al stated that, as soon as official permission is granted for the rescue flights to resume, it would be implementing the planned flights to bring stranded Israelis home.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Ministry said that "following coordination with all relevant parties, it was agreed that flights operated by Israeli airlines from Dubai to Israel would begin on Friday, October 2. However, due to the need to complete the necessary preparations and coordination by security officials for the operation of the flights, a delay is expected in the departure of the repatriation flights from Dubai.
I'd trust El Al security far more than Dubai's after this week. Odds are that Smit Machchhar might trust it better than his current employer, too.
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