Flydubai pilot to Indian Prime Minister: I opened the cockpit door while I was being attacked

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The Indian pilot who was attacked on a Flydubai flight on Wednesday told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he opened the plane's cockpit door while he was being attacked, according to a video released by the Prime Minister's Office on Friday.

Pilot Smit Machar said that he opened the cockpit door while he was on the ground and was being attacked by his co-pilot on board flight No. FZ 1073 heading from Dubai to Tel Aviv. "It was not possible for me to let all the passengers die," Machar told the Indian Prime Minister.

The plane's Indian captain, Smit Machar, who despite his injury was able to open the cockpit door, allowing the plane to be saved, was transferred from Saudi Arabia to the UAE yesterday, Thursday, where the Indian embassy in Abu Dhabi announced that he was "in good health and recovering well."

Two days after the Flydubai plane made an emergency landing at Tabuk Airport in Saudi Arabia during a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, carrying 174 passengers, including 166 Israelis, according to the media, the attacker’s motives are still unclear.

According to the passengers' account, the co-pilot stabbed the captain with the aim of shooting down the plane, which descended five thousand meters in one minute. However, despite his injury, the captain was able to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter the cabin and control the attacker.

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump threatened Iran with a “very strong strike” if its involvement in the attack on the pilot of a Flydubai plane was confirmed during the flight to Tel Aviv, adding that he believed this hypothesis was likely.

Trump said that the Iranians "will take a very strong blow," in response to a journalist's question about whether the United States would respond if Tehran was proven responsible.

Without waiting for the results of the ongoing investigations, Israel denounced the "attempted terrorist attack."

Flydubai suspended its flights to and from Tel Aviv following the thwarted attack.

During a chat with reporters at the White House, Trump said he believes Iran is involved in the operation, explaining, “I say the answer is yes, based on what I hear, but we are working on this matter at this very moment.”

In the first information provided regarding the attack on the plane, the Saudi authorities confirmed on Thursday that “an assault had occurred on the pilot of the plane by his assistant,” based on the results of preliminary investigations.

She indicated that the suspect was transferred to the United Arab Emirates, where the Public Prosecutor announced the opening of an investigation into the incident “to verify the extent of its connection to any terrorist activity or purpose or the existence of prior planning or direction for it,” according to what the official Emirates News Agency “WAM” reported on Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Omani attacker “underwent a process of extremist ideological indoctrination,” as he put it, although he did not rule out the possibility that he was suffering from psychological disorders.

Many Israeli newspapers published on their front pages on Thursday a picture of Yaniv Hayon, the plumber who narrated that he pulled the attacker out of the cabin, then grabbed the control stick and succeeded in correcting the plane’s course thanks to what he saw on television programs.