New Delhi:

Captain Smit Machchhar, the pilot who fought off an alleged attempt to seize control of a flydubai aircraft bound for Israel, has described to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the terrifying moments inside the cockpit when he realised that his co-pilot was attacking him. Machchhar, who was seriously injured in the incident, said the flight had begun normally and that he had been looking towards the front of the cockpit while his co-pilot prayed.

Then, after several minutes, he felt a heavy blow to the back of his head.

“It was a normal flight, and the co-pilot wanted to pray … which a lot of locals do pray … which is not out of the ordinary,” Machchhar told Netanyahu. “While he was praying, out of respect, I was looking at the front and not at the back, and suddenly, after about four-five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head.”

His first thought, he said, was that the aircraft itself had suffered catastrophic damage.

“My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft, that something is not right … but after that the blows kept coming, one after the other and that’s when I realised that it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who is in the cockpit with me,” he added. “I did try and stop him, but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing, and I was completely blurred out.”

Then he realised that the aircraft was rapidly descending.

“And at that point, the next feeling I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down,” he said. “My memory is still in bits and pieces right now, but this is what I remember out of that time. “I did try and manage to open the door once, but I think he shut it back – closed. And at this point, I remember, I was lying down in the cockpit floor, and I felt the aircraft and the whooshing sound and people screaming.”

It was then, he said, that he realised he had one final opportunity to prevent the aircraft from going down.

“And as I was telling the Ambassador here, I had that one last fight left in me,” he said. “Call it personal or call it for people, I did it because if I didn’t do it, I was going to die, and that’s when I pushed against everything… I gave everything that I had and went for the door and opened the door. And thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back … took over control and the rest is what you know.”

The conversation with Netanyahu came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Machchhar by telephone on Friday and praised him for his actions. The prime minister had said a day earlier that Machchhar had shown “immense courage and unwavering resolve” in protecting the lives of others despite being seriously injured.