- 12 minutes ago
A roundtable of aviation experts discussed how Indian pilot Smit Machchhar helped avert a potential disaster aboard Flydubai flight FZ1073 after being attacked by his co-pilot. The pilots examined Machchhar’s decision to open the cockpit door despite his injuries, allowing passengers to intervene as the aircraft rapidly lost altitude. The discussion also focused on the challenges faced by pilots during cockpit emergencies and the importance of quick decision-making and crew coordination. Machchhar, who has more than 13 years of flying experience, is recovering in hospital following the September 30 incident.
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NewsTranscript
00:01Good evening, you're watching NewsTrack with me.
00:03Maria Shakila, pilot was injured.
00:05The aircraft was plunging thousands of feet and inside the cockpit.
00:11174 passengers had no idea what had happened.
00:15Fly Dubai Flight FZ-1073 descended thousands of feet
00:18before Captain Smith managed to open the cockpit door
00:23allowing other passengers to intervene.
00:26Investigators are now examining the co-pilot's motive
00:29and its possible links.
00:30Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
00:33has said that the attacker in the Fly Dubai incident
00:36had undergone Islamist radicalization
00:39and intended to crash the plane with all its passengers on board.
00:44He has also called the Omani pilot a terrorist.
00:47The United Arab Emirates, which is investigating the incident,
00:52has also for the first time publicly described it as an act of terror.
00:56Meanwhile, the hero of the Fly Dubai Flight,
00:59Captain Smith, is recovering from his injuries.
01:02He is currently undergoing treatment in Abu Dhabi
01:04and has also described those terrifying moments
01:07to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a video call.
01:11Let's listen in to what his conversation with Prime Minister was.
01:15Thank you, sir.
01:45foreign
01:53foreign
01:59अंदोस्तानी जान लेने वारे तो मेंने जांने कि अपने सुलीद उन्याव स्थांताने दिये हों
02:17स्थाने ट्रबों है
02:20आपने उन्यावा तर्फेल है ऋससी लोड़ाय ब्रुद्रेशों के परचाहलाалась
02:24foreign
02:28foreign
02:29foreign
02:31foreign
02:33foreign
02:36foreign
02:37foreign
02:39foreign
02:39foreign
02:41Yes I have some knowledge, I have talked a lot about it, about Gita Ben and Sonal Ben, but I
02:49have not talked about it, but I have said that you have a name of Gita, but you have got
02:57the name of Gita, but you have got the name of Gita, and you have got the name of Gita,
03:04and you have got the name of Gita.
03:11He made his life.
03:13Thank you sir.
03:14I want to hear from you.
03:18Sir, for me, I told you,
03:22you are the biggest, biggest idol.
03:25And you call me and call me,
03:29and I feel very, very good.
03:35I, in that moment,
03:38Sir,
03:40I thought,
03:41I was my life.
03:44But there was one moment
03:46that I realized
03:47that if I did not do anything,
03:49because I was left behind,
03:51I was left behind,
03:54and at that time,
03:56I said,
03:56I was 17-17,
04:00I was captain.
04:01I was captain.
04:04And I realized
04:05that I was left behind.
04:08I was left behind.
04:11I was left behind.
04:13I was right behind.
04:15I was right behind.
04:15And I knew,
04:16that this was a last push-o-gacement.
04:21The door was right.
04:23And I was right behind.
04:38But I told them,
04:40and I was right behind.
04:43And at the same time,
04:45I can't even tell them that I can't stop all of them.
04:50After that, I can't get good care and medical attention.
05:06And I'm just...
05:10The only thing I was thinking about is that I would just say that I was only 40.
05:18At that time, I was only 40.
05:21Now, I know that I am going to be a child.
05:26I was just a call and I was very tired.
05:30I was always tired of doing my own.
05:32I wasn't even tired of it.
05:35So, that's it.
05:36Sorry, why am I going to stop?
05:40Let me bring in my guests now.
05:43Squadron leader Debalina Das is a pilot and an aviation specialist.
05:48We have Dave Comendat, aviation security expert and former vice president and chief security officer at the Boeing company.
05:56We will be joined by Captain Ruchi Wadia, founder, president, Federation of Indian Pilots and a former Air India pilot
06:04shortly.
06:05We are also being joined by Terry Torzer, who's a former airline pilot and author of Confessions of an Airline
06:13Pilot, Why Planes Crash.
06:16Let me start with Dave first.
06:20Dave, what we know so far, the UAE investigators say that this is an act of terror.
06:27Our Israeli prime minister has gone on record to say that the Omani pilot, the co-pilot of Captain Smith,
06:36had undergone Islamist radicalization.
06:39These are unusual circumstances that are there inside the cockpit.
06:44So what do you think we know so far, according to you?
06:53Me?
06:54Dave, if you heard me.
06:55Oh, I'm sorry.
06:57I think it's early in the investigation.
07:01And while that has been a claim that's been made, I think more needs to be looked at to determine
07:06exactly what has, what occurred and what led this individual, the Omani co-pilot, to take the action that he
07:14did.
07:15Okay, so there are a lot of unanswered questions.
07:18Captain Wadia, if you would come in and, you know, help us understand.
07:23The co-pilot has been identified as an Omani national.
07:27Now there are multi-country investigation that is underway.
07:30As someone who must be following this story very, very closely, at this point, what do you think we do
07:36not know?
07:38Well, I have been following, and now it's fairly evidence.
07:41I don't think we need to presume most of the things.
07:44It was definitely a suicide mission.
07:46It was definitely a terror attack.
07:49But what is more relevant, and most people should be aware, and you should be aware, is it is fairly
07:55easy nowadays to indoctrinate someone in a very brief, short period of time.
08:01Recently, you've seen people who are doctors, well-to-do doctors also in Delhi, students who are well-to-do
08:09students also have been indoctrinated.
08:11I know personally people from the armed forces who were perfectly normal, absolutely fine when they were inducted in the
08:18armed forces, who were perfectly normal for so many years, and suddenly within a week, they have been indoctrinated.
08:25And therefore, a lot of special emphasis should be laid by the government on various procedures to be adopted, and
08:32regular procedures now to check indoctrination.
08:37So that is extremely important.
08:39And Captain Wadia, in this particular case, there are reports that for the last eight to nine months, the Omani
08:46pilot had been posting jihadist content on his social media platforms and profiles.
08:54So there was a clear indication of perhaps his state of mind.
08:57Do you think that when an airline now will be appointing an individual in a critical role such as this,
09:08they will be now going through the entire profile, or is that something which is already practiced?
09:14Sure, it's extremely important.
09:16I'm sure everyone is profiled when they join.
09:19It is not necessary that there could be indoctrinated with the time they join, even in sensitive places like a
09:25pilot, or even in the armed forces, or even in police forces.
09:29There could be indoctrinated at any given point in time when they are perfectly normal also.
09:35So this issue is not only to be taken into consideration by doctors or specialists, but awareness, wide awareness of
09:44people around India's society should be, if they suspect anything, they should report it.
09:50If they suspect someone is behaving unnaturally, it should be reported.
09:54This has now become very clear and evident, and it must be taken very seriously.
09:59All right, squadron leader Debulina Das, come in now.
10:04This was a four-hour ordeal with 17,000-plus feet plunge.
10:10In aviation terms, how close was this to a fatal loss of control event?
10:19It was definitely very close to a loss of the control of the maneuverability.
10:24And as we already know, even the rudders had sheared off.
10:30So this aircraft could have gone into a plunge and could have reached the state where it couldn't have been
10:36recovered.
10:37But somehow in the whole incident we see that the sequence of incidents, the presence of an extra set of
10:48crew, the presence of a doctor, the whole mission of Captain Smith to save the situation, and everything has played
10:57towards this miracle.
10:58We can say this is a miracle, because if someone inside the cockpit is so determined to jeopardize or hijack
11:05the cockpit, it really has to be some amount of miracle to get it out of there.
11:10Because we see that the aircraft has plunged from 34,000 to 17,000 in less than two minutes.
11:16So this is something which is miraculous, which is close to like a Hollywood movie, kind of something like Mission
11:25Impossible.
11:26But I would also like to include in this that the aircraft, which the captain especially, the kind of courage
11:36he has shown to get the situation in control,
11:40and the sequence of actions that he has done definitely shows that how well trained and how professional he is.
11:49And probably 75 to 80 percent of the credit for this incident to not become a fatal accident goes to
12:00him.
12:00Okay, so let me bring in Terry Torzer now, someone who wrote that fascinating book, Confessions of an Airline Pilot,
12:07Why Planes Crash.
12:08Terry is joining me from Sussex.
12:11Terry, you have called this pure chance that this did not end in tragedy.
12:16If, according to you, it is luck that saved 174 people, what exactly failed before FZ1073 took off?
12:28Well, I suppose it's always a question of multiple issues.
12:34I suppose the most obvious one being the mental state of the first officer in this particular incident.
12:42The fact that he had access to a weapon.
12:47I know that there has been much discussion about use of the crash axe.
12:52If indeed it was that, I don't really see that that's an avoidable problem because it has to be there
12:58on the flight deck.
13:01If he took a weapon onto the aircraft of his own, then obviously that's a failure of security.
13:06I'm going to come to the weapon in just a bit, but let's get into the motive here and the
13:12identity of the co-pilot,
13:13which is being discussed now and what has been shared by the UAE investigators and also what the Israeli prime
13:21minister is saying.
13:22The question is also someone who joined the airline eight months ago and has had history of this nature in
13:31which for the last eight months he had been posting a certain kind of content which makes him a suspect.
13:36The question is, he has ended up with a weapon in the cockpit.
13:44Yes, I mean, obviously, you know, we come back to the discussion of the weapon.
13:48If it was the normal act that's secured on the flight deck for the purposes of the crew to escape,
13:56then I don't see that there's a way around that.
13:59If he actually managed to get a weapon onto the aircraft, that's a security issue.
14:06There is no mental screening for pilots and it is very hard to see how you would introduce a specific
14:14system for doing that.
14:16In the majority of cases, the individuals are well known to the airline because pilots go through scrutiny and testing
14:26and training all the time.
14:29It's a regular thing. And so the training department and other members of the crew have a pretty good idea
14:37of what kind of person is involved.
14:39But obviously, if you've got someone who has a deliberate decision, made a deliberate decision to deceive everybody and then
14:48become a terrorist without revealing intent beforehand,
14:54I don't see how you can detect that.
14:56So, Dave, isn't it a question of screening now when a pilot enters the cockpit with a weapon?
15:06What happened to all the protocols which were put in place, the rules which were rewritten after the 9-11
15:14incident?
15:16Well, the screening procedures around the world vary for crew members.
15:21In general, they're supposed to be screened at or near the same level as the regular passenger.
15:27But that's not the case in all countries of the world.
15:30They have to meet the ICAO baseline standard.
15:33But in this particular case, that will be part of the investigation.
15:36And to Terry's point, was there a physical knife brought on board or was it the axe that was already
15:42available in the cockpit used?
15:43And I think that that's one of the things that's really important.
15:46The other piece that's important is the fact that this individual was posting for eight months online, apparently,
15:52and that security screening, security tracking, insider threat programs did not pick this up,
16:00did not raise this as a red flag and bring this behavior to the airline security department's attention
16:07so that they could have looked into this further.
16:12You know, what is evident now is that, you know, this region is already a tensed region because of an
16:21ongoing war.
16:22This is West Asia that we are talking about.
16:24And a flight flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv undergoes this kind of near catastrophe here, Dave.
16:33So my question then is that, do you think that this will lead to more caution?
16:41Because aviation clearly is now becoming a new weapon in this ongoing warfare.
16:47Absolutely.
16:48Aviation has always been a target of terrorism because of the sensationalism that comes with any type of air disaster.
16:56And I think the positive thing after an incident like this is the entire system will get looked at again.
17:02What failed?
17:04How did it fail?
17:05Why did it fail?
17:06What needs to be done differently going forward?
17:09So out of this near tragedy, there will be much scrutiny across the globe on crew screening, crew screening procedures.
17:16What are the airlines doing internally to monitor all of their flight crews, not just the pilots, but also the
17:23flight crews themselves?
17:24Are they doing enough?
17:25Does more need to be done, especially in the mental health area?
17:29Is there more that needs to be done in this space going forward?
17:33Okay, so, you know, screening is important here, mental health again.
17:38And Captain Wadia, do you think that Captain Smith has ensured that all the questions that were raised with regards
17:47to Indians and the Indian aviation has been put to rest once and for all?
17:52And particularly the incidents which have happened in recent months?
17:57He's done a wonderful job to start with.
18:00The most important thing is having the presence of mind as he's being attacked.
18:05And to what an extent he must have been naïve, he was bleeding, and he could have been unconscious also.
18:10But before getting unconscious, he had the presence of mind of opening the door, alerting the crew members, the other
18:17passengers who were there, who were able to overpower the co-pilot.
18:20Now, that is extremely important as far as the specific area is concerned and the specific incident is concerned.
18:28But my fear is two grounds.
18:31One is regular monitoring, not only by specialists, not only by people who are directors who are hired by a
18:38company, not only for pilots, for cabin crew, flight engineers, the ground engineers, and all people who are in a
18:46sensitive area, to be monitored on a regular basis by not only the specialists, by the people around him, his
18:54own colleagues, people who would regularly interact with the airline.
18:57That is one aspect.
18:59And certainly people like me who are following these incidents would like to know from the DFDR when the incident
19:05comes out.
19:05Because this seems to, this aircraft, what no one has mentioned so far, in my reading, this aircraft could have
19:11gone through the sound barrier.
19:13It may have even gone beyond the speed of sound.
19:16And that is why the rudder has been damaged badly.
19:20And I would, if it was much faster and a much higher rate of descent, there could have been far
19:26greater damage to the aircraft.
19:28And it was just a few seconds or minutes of it.
19:32So, Captain Wadia, help us understand.
19:34When an aircraft goes into a sudden nosedive during this struggle, this is the case in this particular airline,
19:42how difficult is it to recover control in that exact moment?
19:48First of all, this is not a sudden dive.
19:49It was, the pilot actually wanted it to dive.
19:54He has pushed the stick forward.
19:56See, if it's a normal descent, even in an emergency descent, when you have decompression in the aircraft,
20:02the rate of descent is never so fast.
20:04Now, what must have happened, we don't know all the evidence.
20:08There must have been a lot of negative G in the cockpit.
20:11The people inside, the passengers and the cabin crew, must have found it very difficult to even walk inside the
20:16aircraft also with this diving incident.
20:19It's not very difficult.
20:21Once you are at the controls, then you can put the stick back or take over the controls and reduce
20:27the descent and get the aircraft to level flight.
20:31Let me bring in Terry now.
20:33Terry, after 9-11, cockpit doors were hardened to keep terrorists out.
20:40Did this flight prove that the threat can already be inside?
20:44Because critics ask whether those doors are almost too secure, keeping attackers out, but also trapping crew in.
20:52Should aviation then rewrite its post-9-11 playbook?
21:00I suspect that everybody will be looking at that element pretty closely now.
21:06It's always been one of those factors that has made some people uncomfortable.
21:12Because you are able, obviously, we all remember the 2015 German wings crash where the co-pilot locked the captain
21:22out and nobody could get in.
21:24And that is an issue.
21:26It used to be considered extremely rare.
21:30And the balance of risk was better to keep the terrorist in the cabin out of the flight deck.
21:37Terrorists change tactics to meet the demands of the system.
21:42And I suspect that we need now to look at other emergency measures that would allow people with good intent
21:51to get in.
21:52But obviously, that has risks attached to it as well.
21:56There's no simple answer.
21:57Squadron leader, Das, come in now, you know, because passengers have been describing those, you know, hours or moments very
22:06clearly.
22:07And they are saying, they have said that the captain was bleeding and falling out of the cockpit while being
22:14attacked.
22:14How extraordinary is that breach?
22:17And also, the fact that the survivors say that passengers and off-duty pilots entered the cockpit and overpowered the
22:26attacker.
22:30Yeah, so just to add something, like when we were talking about the cockpit door, from inside the cockpit door,
22:37we have a mechanism to raise an emergency.
22:39Like if we want somebody from outside to be able to open the cockpit door, if there is an internal
22:45emergency, there is a mechanism to do that.
22:47In which the outside crew, whoever is in control, the cabin crew, can enter the cockpit.
22:55You can unlock the cockpit in an emergency procedure, which they are taught to enter the cockpit.
23:01So I think protecting the cockpit after 9-11 and whatever is the way or the process that ICAO follows
23:09is quite well articulated and architected.
23:12But in today's, in this last case, I'm sure that the struggle would have been so bad that he was
23:21not able to do everything chronologically.
23:24But he knew, the captain knew, that somehow he has to get help.
23:28And that only way was to alarm the people who were behind.
23:32Also, sometimes when we have passengers who are captains or co-pilots traveling with us in the passenger seat, the
23:42captain is made aware of that such travel.
23:45Like the cabin crew or the captain traveling in the passenger seat comes and introduces and says that if you
23:53ever need any help, we are traveling with you.
23:55We are seated in this seat and that seat.
23:57So that might have been there in Smith's mind that we have two captains inside in the cabin and we
24:04also, I need help.
24:06So this could have been the main reason.
24:08But tell me, I mean, inside the cockpit, since you have been there, where exactly, on which side would be
24:15an emergency button?
24:17And why wasn't, you know, Captain Smith able to press that?
24:21Because he chose to open the door instead.
24:24Yeah, so what happened was, what I visualize it as, that every cockpit is different.
24:29First, he raced the transponder, which generally in a Boeing is just ahead.
24:34He raced the 7500 and 7700.
24:39And then because of the scuffle, I'm sure they might not be restricted to the seat and they have raced
24:45or they have come out or whatever has been the situation.
24:48He might have been out of the reach to reach out to the emergency switch, but was closer to open
24:55the door.
24:56So we don't know the position of both the pilots inside the cockpit, that what was the situation when the
25:04fight was going on.
25:05But we know both were equally, or Captain Smith was more, but even the Omani first officer was injured.
25:12So probably they had already risen from the seat or something would have happened,
25:17which made him be able to access the switch to open the door more easily than to raise the emergency
25:24alarm.
25:24We also don't know.
25:26Yeah, we don't know a lot of questions.
25:29You know, the list of don't know is actually long here, squadron leader Das.
25:33Let me go back to Terry and I have a couple of questions, you know, to the author here.
25:38The captain here is being celebrated as a hero.
25:42He was stabbed and bleeding and still he was fighting.
25:46What does a pilot's mind do in those seconds?
25:48Because here is Captain Smith who managed to open the cockpit door after being wounded.
25:53So, as someone who would understand a cockpit, help us walk through this, was it training instinct or something else?
26:03Well, I think it wouldn't be training in the sense that, you know, nobody in my experience has been trained
26:11to deal with the exact situation he faced.
26:14Instinct, instinct, yes, because any captain will instinctively want to save their aircraft as well as save their life.
26:23And I think the interview that he has given expressed pretty clearly what his thought process was.
26:31He was determined to try and survive and he realised the importance of opening the flight deck to get assistance.
26:41And so, he kept fighting until help arrived.
26:45It is possible and given the man's nature, I suspect that if there hadn't been other pilots on the aircraft,
26:56he would probably have tried to survive long enough to land it.
26:59Okay, let me try and wrap up this conversation with, you know, Dave Commandant and Captain Wadia getting the last
27:07word.
27:07Dave, go ahead.
27:08What do you think this multi-country probe, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel will be able to reveal?
27:16Because, you know, and what do you see as immediate fallout globally in the aviation sector?
27:24I'll answer the last question first.
27:27The immediate fallout is a review of all security procedures, crew screening, passenger screening, revisiting the process to make sure
27:36that there aren't any gaps that need to be filled.
27:40And then, secondarily, the investigation that will be headed by these countries, I'm confident that they will determine the cause.
27:50They'll determine how the weapon was introduced, whether it was already there, whether it was brought on board by the
27:55co-pilot,
27:55whether it was brought on board prior to the co-pilot entering the aircraft.
27:59There's very capable security organizations in those countries, and they will determine what actually happened.
28:06And changes will occur once those are understood.
28:10Okay.
28:10Last word to you, Captain Wadia.
28:12Go ahead.
28:14Well, what you ask, what is likely to happen in the future, as I told you, indoctrination.
28:19See, most other countries, Western countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, they do not have this major problem of indoctrination.
28:27People in our region, and India especially, has a problem of indoctrination.
28:32So, in my mind, that is the first and most important issue that needs to be tackled to start with.
28:36And as the last speaker just mentioned, when you asked if there were no other pilots on the cockpit, what
28:42would have happened?
28:43As long as the pilot in command, even if he was injured badly, as long as he was not unconscious
28:50totally,
28:51and he had some sense, he could have, because most of these aircrafts can be landed automatically also,
28:57you don't really have to physically fly them, as you can land them by autopilot and things like that also.
29:04So, as long as the pilot was conscious, that was most important for him to be conscious.
29:09Because he was conscious and he was aware, he could at least alert the passengers, open the door, put the
29:14transponder switch.
29:15So, a lot of things, and you ask him, what is the position?
29:18I don't think the captain, at that point in time, would have had his seatbelt on,
29:23because the very fact that he was being stabbed, he wanted to stop the pilot,
29:27and he wanted to stop the aircraft from the descent.
29:29And he must have unstrapped himself and tried to overpower the co-pilot,
29:34tried to manage the aircraft and tried to ensure that it sinks so fast, and alerted the passengers.
29:40Okay. We have really come to the end of this discussion.
29:43Thank you so much, Captain Wadia, Dave Comendant, Squadron Leader Das,
29:48and Terry Torzer for joining us and sharing your views.
29:51That's all from me on this edition of NewsTrack.
29:53Thanks so much for watching.
29:54We'll see you next time.