This past Wednesday, they were strangers on a plane. By Friday, they were family. It was the first time hero passengers Daniel Schlichter, Zvika Manes, Tal Samuel and Asaf Rajuan had seen each other since those terrifying moments on FlyDubai’s Flight 1073.
“That minute is probably the longest minute of my life,” said Schlichter about the plane’s terrifying freefall. “And the first thing that went up is actually 9/11. And I said, ‘How can it be? How can we end this life like that?’ You see all your life and you think about what is important. And just holding my wife’s hand and saying, ‘If we have to go, we have to go.'”
Their Boeing 737 Max was nosediving into the Arabian Desert nearly at the speed of sound. The co-pilot from Oman had stabbed the captain, grabbed the controls, and tried to crash the plane full of Israeli passengers. The jet plummeted 14,000 feet in seconds. They were less than 30 seconds from crashing, with G-forces Manes described as being “like a roller coaster.”
What they couldn’t have known was that inside the locked cockpit, Captain Smit Machchhar was fighting for his life, as he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday: “The co-pilot, he wanted to pray. And suddenly there was a big blow to the back of my head,” Machchhar said. “I did try to stop him, and that’s when I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door and thankfully people were waiting.”
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Manes and his family were sitting in the first row. His wife had just taken his daughter to the bathroom. “I heard my daughter shouting, ‘He’s stabbing the pilot. He’s stabbing the pilot.’ She was shouting like animal,” he said.
At that moment, Rajuan said they thought they were going to die.
Schlichter, holding his wife’s hand, thought to himself, “‘If I have to go, I’ll hold her hand as tight as possible, and we’ll go together.’ That’s it.”
Almost simultaneously, these passengers decided they had to take action.
“I saw my daughter and my wife, and I understand that I must run. I turn, switch to an animal switch, and I feel really like an animal. … I decided that we are going to survive, try to survive, to save my family,” Manes said.
Tal Samuel said, “Everyone here, on the day-to-day, are super decent and polite people. But when you watch the situation, you didn’t see a finance person, and you didn’t see an insurance guy. It was something different. It was like lions that are in a killing mode.”
Along with an Israeli plumber named Yaniv Hayoun, they ran toward the bleeding captain, whom they called a hero.
“Not just because he opened the door. Because he had amazing fight with the terrorist. He really fight him,” said Rajuan.
Then, they piled onto the co-pilot, Hamam al Hamami, who we’ve now learned had been banned from flying in his home country, Oman, because of concerns he’d adopted extremist views. And Israeli investigators say they’ve uncovered social media posts where he talked about killing Jews. Officials in the United Arab Emirates now say he’d committed a “terrorist act.”
“I was jumping on him, punching,” said Manes. “He tried to resist, and we didn’t know if he has a knife.”
With a pack of men struggling at the entrance to the cockpit, just then, Tal Samuel looked up and saw the cockpit was empty. He remembered he had been sitting next to two off-duty pilots.
“And the other pilot that came from his seat, because they are blocking the entrance to the cockpit, so that’s why he jumped,” Samuel said.
According to Rajuan, the pilot leaned over the chair to grab the controls and right the plane.
They were out of freefall. But the captain was bleeding out. “And we are shouting, if there is a doctor in the plane,” Manes said.
Shota Musaev, a dentist, said to his wife, “‘I need to go,’ and, ‘I love you.’ That’s it.”
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Musaev got up and began treating stab wounds on Machchhar’s head and hands. Musaev was afraid he could die from the wounds.
“Yes, I think we have not more time. I check everything, of course, I said to the steward, ‘We have no time – land the plane,'” he said.
But the nearest airport was in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, a country that has no diplomatic relations with Israel.
“I was worried that maybe they will arrest us,” Manes said, “because they will see blood all over.”
But they were not arrested — they were welcomed.
The captain was whisked to a hospital where he’s recovering, but at night Dr. Musaev remains with his heroic patient. He said that he can see his face when he closes his eyes: “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I think from this time we are a very big family, you know.”
And then, in Hebrew, Musaev said, “If he hadn’t been smart and heroic, we would not be alive. On the other hand, if we had not been heroes, he would not be alive.”
Produced by Sari Aviv, Jon Carras and Christine Romo. Editors: Chad Cardin and George Pozderec.
