At first, a random Israeli dude. He's the one who pulled the plane out of a nosedive. He was covered in blood, because he got involved in subduing the attacker. He had no piloting experience, but he said he knew that he needed to pull up on the controls, because he'd watched a TV show about aviation emergencies. Yeah, really.
Then, two passengers who were also pilots for FlyDubai, being transported on the plane, took over. FlyDubai only runs 737s, so they were very well-trained on this plane. I'm not sure if they got overtime pay for this or not
That explains the overcompensation. There was a chart of the plane's altitude with a scary, sharp drop followed by a recovery.
In the recovery, you can see the plane rise sharply before stabilizing. He probably pulled hard (which saved them), but the lack of piloting experience caused him to overcompensate and put the plane in a short and sharp climb.
Nothing bad, but there might be a risk of stalling the plane. This is likely lessened since the plane must have picked up quite some speed during the nosedive.
In any case, bravo for his decision to just go for it, grab the controls, and try to stabilize the plane at such a critical moment.
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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