'He's taught us courage': Friend on Indian pilot hailed as a hero

Sometimes their paths crossed in the air, too. In 2024, Gosalia was flying to London through Dubai airspace when he recognised Machchhar's voice on the radio. Machchhar was flying to Mumbai.

"We greeted each other," he recalls.

On Wednesday, Machchhar was captain of a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv when another pilot attacked and stabbed him in the cockpit. The Boeing 737 Max was diverted to Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia, where Machchhar was taken to hospital.

He remains in a stable condition, according to the Indian embassy in Riyadh.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called Machchhar a "true hero", saying he saved the lives of 174 people and prevented a "catastrophic mid-air disaster".

For Gosalia, however, the man at the centre of the extraordinary incident is still "Smit Mac" – the nickname used by his friends and colleagues.

"He was a fun guy, gentleman – very brilliant person," he says. "Outgoing person, jovial. Very jovial."

They would meet during layovers in places such as Milan and Bangkok, and play tennis-ball cricket when they were back in Mumbai. Machchhar also helped younger pilots, teaching new recruits and passing on what he had learnt.

"He was a very disciplined flier," Gosalia says.

That discipline was reinforced by years of training, including from former Indian Air Force pilots who moved into commercial aviation.

"That training gives you more focus, more discipline, and more focus on motor skills," Gosalia says.

One part of that training, he says, is known among pilots as "chair flying": rehearsing an emergency procedure while sitting in a chair, mentally running through the sequence and moving your hands to where the relevant switches and controls would be in the cockpit.

The idea is to make those movements instinctive when something goes wrong and there is little time to think.

Machchhar had plenty of experience to draw on. He had more than 9,750 hours of flying experience, including more than 6,400 hours as pilot-in-command, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Gosalia says the exact sequence of Wednesday's confrontation will become clearer from the aircraft's flight data and cockpit recordings. But whatever happened inside the cockpit, he says, Machchhar had to make decisions under an extraordinary kind of pressure.

"What happened to him, what he did – he was the commander on the flight," Gosalia says.

For a pilot, there are procedures for an engine failure, a fire or a loss of cabin pressure. There is no conventional checklist for another person trying to overpower you in the cockpit.

And that, Gosalia says, is where courage matters.

"How much courage plays a role? A lot," he says. "This was a threat to life."

Then comes the thought that perhaps best explains why the incident has affected him so deeply.

"Smit has taught us courage. Now we will do the same thing if something like this happens."