Co-pilot stabs captain in cockpit of flydubai flight to Tel Aviv; Capt Smit Machhar in focus
A co-pilot attacked the Indian-origin captain with a knife mid-air on a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, leaving 180 passengers terrified.
New Delhi: Wednesday (the 30th) was a frightening day for the 180 passengers of a flight from Dubai to Israel. At an altitude of thousands of feet, the co-pilot suddenly attacked the captain with a knife. The captain is Capt Smit Machhar, who is of Indian origin. Panic followed. After the incident on this flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, Capt Machhar's name has come into focus.
A violent clash broke out in the cockpit of the flydubai aircraft, and the responsibility of keeping the aircraft under control fell on him. According to professional information available about Machhar, he has long experience of flying the Boeing 737.
Machhar spent the key years of his pilot career in India with SpiceJet, where he worked for about 11 years. During this time he served as pilot-in-command and senior commander. From November 2020 he also worked as a line training captain, a role in which training other pilots and assessing their work was a key responsibility.
His professional profile states that he has about 9,750 hours of flying experience. He has flown the Boeing 737-800, 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9. His long experience gives him extensive expertise on aircraft of the Boeing 737 series. Alongside flying, he has also played a role in training.
As a line training captain, he was involved in the training process of other pilots. He was hired by flydubai directly as a captain. Such an appointment is made to bring in already experienced pilots as captains directly at another airline.
While landing at Mykonos airport in Greece, Capt Smit also faced extremely dangerous weather. Strong winds were blowing and a sudden windshear (a sharp change in wind direction and speed) formed, which could have sent the aircraft straight into the ground. There is no room for error in such conditions. Without panicking, Smit applied the windshear escape technique he had learnt in the simulator, gave the aircraft full power and landed it safely.
