‘I couldn’t let everybody else die,’ says hero Flydubai pilot Smit Machchhar

Israel Foreign Ministry/Reuters

Smit Machchhar, the hero Flydubai captain who fought off a savage attack by his copilot, kept fighting because he could not “let everybody else die,” he said in his first public remarks since Wednesday’s suspected hijacking attempt.

“In that moment, I was fighting for my life,” Machchhar told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call on Friday. “Because I had fallen down… I was so severely wounded that I had fallen down… at that time, I was thinking what if I don’t get up?

A horrific mid-air catastrophe on a plane heading to Tel Aviv was averted in a stunning turn of events on Wednesday when passengers and crew bravely rushed into the cockpit and regained control of the aircraft.

Machchhar said he was on the ground in cockpit when he realized the plane was going down.

“And I knew in that moment – one last push, Smit! Just do it. The door is right there,” he told Modi. “And even at that time, he was beating me up.”

“And then I just opened it… and then everybody came,” he said, referring to several other passengers who then rushed into the cockpit and restrained his attacker.

“I was doing this for my life, but at the same time, I knew that I couldn’t let everybody else die.”

This is a developing story and will be updated…

以色列外交部/路透社

迪拜航空的英雄机长斯密特·马赫查尔击退了副驾驶的野蛮攻击，他在周三疑似劫机事件发生后首次公开讲话中表示，他之所以坚持战斗，是因为他不能“让其他人死去”。

“那一刻，我是在为生存而战，”马赫查尔周五在与印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪的视频通话中说道。“因为我倒下了……我伤势太重，以至于倒下了……当时我在想，如果我起不来了怎么办？”

周三，一架飞往特拉维夫的飞机险些发生可怕的空中灾难，但乘客和机组人员勇敢地冲进驾驶舱，重新控制了飞机，避免了这场灾难的发生。

马赫查尔说，他当时在地面的驾驶舱里，突然意识到飞机正在坠落。

“那一刻我就知道——再推一把，斯密特！就这么做吧。门就在那里，”他告诉莫迪。“即便在那时，他还在殴打我。”

“然后我就打开了它……然后大家都来了，”他说道，指的是其他几名乘客随后冲进驾驶舱，制服了袭击者。

“我这样做是为了保命，但同时，我也知道我不能让其他人死去。”

这是一个正在发展中的新闻，我们将持续更新……