New Delhi: Dentist Shota Musaev, who was aboard the flydubai Dubai – TelAviv flight on September 30, provided emergency medical care to Captain Smit Machchhar after he was stabbed by his co-pilot mid-air.
In an interview to a news channel, Musaev described Captain Machchhar to be seriously wounded after the incident. He said, “By the time I got there, the pilot was already on the floor. He had lost a lot of blood. We had to stop the bleeding. We managed to stabilise him, stabilise his blood pressure.”
Musaev, who lives in Rishon, south of Tel Aviv in Israel, is reportedly of Bukharian-Georgian descent and was returning from China with his wife, when he noticed something unusual on the flight.
“We realised in about half a minute that it wasn’t just turbulence on the plane. It was an attack. We jumped up and ran forward towards the cockpit. The passengers had partially overpowered the attacker,” Musaev told TV news channels. He added that the passengers quickly restrained the attacker, lest he should try to break free inside the cockpit again.
What transpired on the flydubai flight
Musaev said that when he heard the passengers’ screams and ran towards the cockpit, his first instinct was to fight the attacker. But he saw Captain Machchhar seriously wounded. “When I entered the cockpit, the pilot was in a very serious condition, bleeding heavily, especially from the head.”
Being the only doctor on board the flydubai aircraft, he quickly tended to Machchhar’s wounds, stopped the bleeding and stabilised his condition. “He was seriously wounded, but he was communicating with us,” Musaev told a news publication.
Musaev said the wounded captain remained in relatively stable condition until the plane landed in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where he was taken away in an ambulance. He said that he later checked about Machchhar’s condition with a senior Saudi official, who told him that the pilot was out of danger.
Musaev recalled the plane’s sharp descent, and described it as “the most difficult moment” of the incident. He said that for several seconds the passengers were convinced that they were going to die.
“My wife was also there during the incident. She was praying every second. And she was also helping people at the back. It was really a miracle. A few more seconds and we wouldn’t be here anymore,” Musaev told TV news channels.
When passengers realised that there were two other pilots on board, and one of them took control of the aircraft, Musaev said, passengers believed they had a chance of surviving.
The Dubai-Tel Aviv flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia following a dispute involving the pilots. During the incident, the aircraft transmitted signals indicating “unlawful interference” and an emergency before landing at Tabuk Airport.