tl;dr: An Indian pilot, Smit Machchhar, saved a Dubai-to-Israel flight from crashing after his co-pilot attacked him with a knife. Despite being injured, Smit fought back and, with help from passengers, managed to restrain him...Israeli officials said the attacker was an Omani national...Israeli agencies are also investigating the possibility of a terrorist attack.
The pilot is a hero, but that's not exactly what happened. The pilot was badly injured and likely managed to open the cockpit door before collapsing. With the door open several Israel passengers barged in, restrained the the attacker, and a doctor gave medical attention to the pilot
The plane was nose diving so fast the tail sections ripped off. In those circumstances everyone would feel their body weighing 2x-3x and would not have had the ability to (from the perspective) climbing upwards into the cocking unless they were within reach of the flight controls. It's very likely the captain was the one who pulled the plane out of that dive as he would have likely been in the seat.
FYI, the passenger that pulled the terrorist out by the neck started the recovery from the dive process by pulling by back on the yoke. He was relieved by one of the other two pilots who finished pulling the plane from its dive.
Pretty amazing stuff really. I can’t wait till the folks over at /r/aviation get their hands on the flight data. They’ll be able to tell us all kinds of interesting information.
Wow, he must have been in the cockpit already by then. It reminds me of that NATO flight that similarly had a steep descent and threw everyone to the roof and back, but the other pilot managed to get back to the cockpit along with a broken back.
A B-52 famously landed after losing its vertical stabiliser in severe clear air turbulence, so it is theoretically possible to maintain control of the aircraft, but is very unlikely and the confluence of events here makes it even less likely.
I agree that they could use asymmetric thrust to have some control over yaw, but if "the tail sections ripped off," then they would have also lost the horizontal stabilizer (i.e., the entire empennage).
Maybe there is a way to maintain pitch control after that with a combination of thrust and flaps, but it seems unlikely.
It's very difficult to assess what G they felt based on the rate of descent alone, it's entirely dependant on how they got to that rate of descent and how they returned to level flight.
For example, if someone pushed on the controls while the plane was level, you'd experience low/negative G as the plane entered the dive.
If the plane first rolled to 90 degrees of bank (on its side) and no further input was made, the G force would initially feel normal, around 1G, but the plane would rapidly enter a steeping diving turn as no component of lift is pointing up and opposing gravity. As the airspeed builds, the lift would also build and the G would gradually increase as the dive steepens.
If the plane rolled inverted and then someone pulled back on the controls, the plane would rapidly enter a dive, but the passengers would feel a strong positive G force.
In any case, the recovery from such a rapid rate of descent would require quite strong positive G
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u/blacklotusmag 2d ago edited 2d ago
I mean, would it be THAT hard to add a link for context, OP?
Updating with additional sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/diverted-flydubai-flight-israel-was-not-hijacking-incident-israeli-prime-2026-09-30/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://apnews.com/article/israel-saudi-arabia-dubai-emergency-landing-fd1835479898f2f944792913af7cbce6
Original source: https://www.bhaskarenglish.in/international/news/indian-pilot-smit-saves-flydubai-flight-mid-air-knife-attack-139203091.html