'I gave everything that I had': Flydubai captain tells Netanyahu about co-pilot's hijacking attempt

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone with flydubai Capt. Smit Machchhar on Saturday.

The Indian national told Netanyahu that he "gave everything that I had" to open the cockpit door once his Omani co-pilot began attacking him in an attempt to hijack the aircraft.

"I had that one last fight left in me," Machchhar told the prime minister. "If I don't do it, I'm going to die... and just went for the door and opened the door."

Machchhar said the ordeal began when his co-pilot said he wanted to pray, which the captain noted was "not out of the ordinary."

The captain said he looked away "out of respect" when he suddenly felt a "big blow to the back of my head."

"My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft," he said. "But then, after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other, and that's when I realized that it's not the aircraft; it's the other guy who was in the cockpit with me."

Despite Machchhar's attempts to stop him, he said the aircraft pitched sharply downward as his vision rapidly faded, noting that he managed to open the cockpit door several times even though his co-pilot kept closing it.