Building Community, One Person at a Time
A Great Miracle Happened This Week
FlyDubai 1073 almost ended in tragedy. The copilot stabbed the pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar from India. The plane plunged down more than 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. Thankfully Captain Machchhar, while fighting his attacker, managed to open the cockpit door. Four Israelis, Asaf Rajwan, Zvika Manes, Yaniv Hayun, and Shota Musaev, stormed the cockpit, stopped the Omani copilot from damaging the plane’s controls, and restrained him using the in-flight headphones that had been handed out. Yaniv, a plumber by trade, not only pulled the copilot away from the controls but also pulled back the yoke to help level the plane, drawing on knowledge from watching aviation disaster programs like Air Crash Investigation. He was assisted by two reserve pilots who were on the flight as passengers, ready to relieve the crew in the cockpit after they landed in Tel Aviv. Shota, a dentist by trade, tended to Captain Machchhar’s wounds until the plane made safe landing in Saudi Arabia and he could get to a hospital.
https://x.com/IsraelHayomHeb/status/2105229040710005212/video/1
A great, manmade miracle occurred, as 174 passengers and crew were saved. There are two fascinating things to me about this incident. One is that the plane was 1073, which has been interpreted as the 3rd anniversary of 10/7, October 7th. Another is that Saudi Arabia, which does not have peace with Israel yet which lets Israeli planes fly over its airspace, offered a runway at its Tabuk airport so that this UAE plane could make a safe landing and allowed an Israeli plane to land to bring the passengers and crew to Tel Aviv in safety.
Three years ago we brought Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah in with shock and horror. This year I hope each of us will bring it in with great celebration, recognizing what could have been tragic was not this time thanks to the intervention of ordinary people who became heroes through their actions.