Flydubai copilot underwent Islamist radicalization: Israel
Reuters, WASHINGTON and NES ZIONA, Israel
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday said that the copilot who tried to crash a passenger jet carrying 174 people on its way to Israel had undergone Islamist radicalization.
No motive has been determined for Wednesday’s harrowing near-disaster on flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, when passengers were able to subdue the attacker and a reserve crew aboard landed the plane in Saudi Arabia.
“I think it’s too early to say whether he had any connections with Iran or with any anyone else,” Netanyahu said.
Flydubai pilot Smit Machchhar, captain of Flight FZ 1073, is pictured in a photograph released by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
Photo: Israel’s Foreign Ministry / AFP
It was clear that the copilot was suicidal, he added.
“If you couple that with the what I just told you about the Islamist tendencies, that radicalization that are found in his background, I think that’ll give us the a pretty good clue,” he said. “But again, I don’t make final conclusions yet.”
Meanwhile, a passenger who helped save the plane from crashing said he knew how to stabilize a nose-diving aircraft after watching an aircrash TV show.
Yaniv Hayun is being hailed in Israel as a hero after he and three other Israeli passengers managed to subdue the copilot, who had stabbed the flight’s captain, before pulling up the jet’s steering control to right it.
A second air crew aboard helped land the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.
“We knew there was an attack, because a woman screamed ‘stabbing’ and the plane shook,” Hayun said. “At that moment I ran to the cockpit and the plane dived.”
He told Netanyahu, who met him at the airport, that the stabbed pilot managed to open the cockpit door before collapsing.
“One [pilot] was down and one was on the controls, and another person came in with me, I grabbed the assailant and put him in a chokehold, and pulled him out,” he said.
He and a few other people subdued the copilot and then he pulled up the steering control of the plane, Hayun said.
Asked how he knew what to do, Hayun said he watches Air Crash Investigation.
Tzvika Manes, an Israeli bank executive and one of the passengers who helped hold the copilot down, said they used airline earphones to tie the copilot up.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said he was nominating Hayun for the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism, along with Manes, and Manes’ wife Tali — who was first to alert the passengers of the violence in the cockpit — and Shota Musaev, a doctor who treated the wounded captain.
Musaev helped incapacitate the copilot with another passenger, Asaf Rajuan, who was also nominated.
“I’m not a hero,” Rajuan said. “It’s something you do without thinking, running to save your daughter’s life, your family’s life, your wife, and all the staff and people on the plane. You don’t think, you just act.”
The airline captain, Smit Machchhar, has also been hailed as a hero for his actions to thwart the disaster, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi writing on X: “In the face of the gravest danger and despite being seriously injured, he showed immense courage and an unwavering resolve to protect the lives of others. His valor helped save hundreds of lives and avert a great tragedy.”
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