MUMBAI: Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, being hailed as a hero for foiling an attempt by his co-pilot to crash an Israel-bound flydubai flight, has said he did not want to go down without a fight and so put in all he had to open the cockpit door from the inside.
“It began as a normal flight. The co-pilot wanted to pray, which a lot of locals do and which is not out of the ordinary. While he was praying, out of respect, I was just looking at the front and not at the back,” Machchhar told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone call on Saturday.
“Suddenly, after I think I would say about four or five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head. My first thought was that there was a catastrophic damage to the aircraft and something is not right,” he said.
