Terrifying footage shows passengers’ fight for control of FlyDubai plane after alleged stabbing

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Terror in the skies on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, passengers cell phones captured a journey that unraveled into chaos. In the aftermath, two bloodied men, the wounded captain, identified as Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, and beside him, the co-pilot accused of stabbing him, restrained on the cabin floor. CBS News has learned he is of Omani origin. According to eyewitnesses, the wounded pilot unlocked the cockpit door before collapsing, allowing others to rush in, including passenger Assaf Rajuan, who fought the attacker in the cockpit before other crew members took control of the plane. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

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“Whoever hearing me, we need help,” he says. “We are in the Tabuk area of Saudi Arabia, which we don’t know. All the passengers are OK, but not the pilot. We need help.” A little more than two hours into the flight, the plane suddenly plunged. Preliminary flight data indicates a drop of more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds. It climbed again, then dropped once more, before finally leveling out. Inside the cabin, families held on to one another, unsure of how much time they had left. Nearly 10 hours after their ordeal began, a replacement FlyDubai plane brought most of the stranded passengers to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and into the arms of those waiting for them. Among them, Assaf Rajuan, still trying to take in his heroism. I didn’t think about it. It’s just something that you do without thinking. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

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In a video statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot, quote, “apparently attempted to crash the plane” with its passengers on board, nearly all of them Israelis. He credited the wounded Captain Machchhar with helping save 174 people. Is something like this truly preventable? It’s nearly impossible to prevent something like this happening because, as some people have said, you can’t prevent crazy, somebody being in a cockpit. That’s a wrong day the wrong time, whatever it is, their motives. And tonight, the alleged attacker is in Saudi custody being interrogated. And all FlyDubai flights to and from Israel have been suspended. Investigators are now trying to establish how something like this could even happen and what needs to change to keep passengers safe from something so horrifying like this from happening again. Yaniv Hayoun is one of the passengers on that flight credited with storming the cockpit and overpowering the attacker. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called him a hero. He joked with the Prime Minister that he wanted to change because of the blood on his shirt. So I want to welcome in Neria Kraus. Neria, you had an exclusive interview in The Free Press with that passenger. And I might note The Free Pressis owned by Paramount, the same parent company as CBS News. So Neria, what did he have to say? So Yaniv Hayoun, he’s real hero. There are a bunch of heroes on this plane, at least five that I can count, including the pilot himself. The pilot is from an Indian descent. He was the one who actually called for help and also opened the door of the cockpit while he was fighting his co-pilot. His co-pilot started to stab him to attack him, trying to crash the plane or to hijack him. So Yaniv Hayoun sat on the 11th row of this airplane. And he was hearing screaming coming from the area of the cockpit. Then the plane took a deep dive, and he understood he had to do something. He was there with his children and his wife. And he understood that he had to do anything he can do to save their lives. So he rushed to the cockpit, started fighting with the co-pilot, choked him, managed to grab him out of his seat, and then also called another pilot that was on the plane. And that pilot took control over the cockpit. By the way, he also told me that he had seen air crash investigation on TV, and this is how he knew that he had to pull up the stick of the pilot’s controls while he was in the cockpit, because there was no one in there and the plane was deep diving. So Yaniv also met Prime Minister Netanyahu, as we can see on screen right now. And Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke to President Trump today. And President Trump just told reporters about this hero, this Israeli plumber who saved the plane. And this is Yaniv Hayoun, that we had an exclusive interview with him right before he met Prime Minister Netanyahu. As you can see in the footage right now on the screen, you can see that he still had blood stains on his shirt, on his pants, even in his shoe, on his socks. And he literally fought with his bare hands alongside other four Israelis. And they fought the co-pilot. And after they fought him and after the plane started to fly safely back to Saudi Arabia, the Israelis guarded both the co-pilot, but also tried to help to save the lives of the Indian pilot. So they guarded both of them, trying to maybe save the lives of the pilot. And eventually, when they landed, the pilot is now being taken care of by doctors in Saudi Arabia. And right now he’s stable. He’s in a really bad condition, but he’s stable. And that’s also an important news to report today. And Yaniv Hanoun, he’s the hero of the day. And he told us how much it meant for him. And like he said, we prevented an almost 9/11. And I think this is the way it is being investigated right now in Israel as a terror attack, obviously, when the co-pilot tried to hijack the plane, possibly crash it while 180 people are on the plane. Oh, my goodness, hero for a lifetime. I know that you also spoke to his wife. So how is she feeling after all of this? So she was very emotional when we spoke. She just landed in Israel. By the way, on the plane, I think it’s important to say– because when you try to imagine what would have happened and how you could have reacted on the plane, they didn’t have Wi-Fi. So they didn’t have any way to contact people back home, their families, their friends, call for help. They had no way to do that. So you saw Assaf Rajuan just describing what happened on the plane. They tried to call for help. They didn’t know that the pilot managed to do that. But they didn’t know that people knew that this plane, the co-pilot, tried to hijack it. So she was telling me how emotional she was seeing her husband, who he was never a fighter. He was never this sports guy. He’s an average Israeli who heard what was going on and decided to go and literally fight with his own bare hands for the lives of 180 people on this plane. So she was very emotional about it. When they landed, she said, I’m so happy to be home. And you can see the map, the way this plane traveled. On those moments when they felt this steep dive, they felt like they were about to die. And those heroes, those Israelis, this Indian-descent pilot, together they just did everything they could in order to save everyone aboard. And they managed to do that with a lot of courage, bravery, and also amazing instincts, just rushing to the place and starting to fight with the co-pilot, choking him, grabbing him away. And also this scene of Yaniv Hanoun, just an average Israeli, a very smart and sharp guy, just starting to take control over the pilot stick, which is unbelievable. I don’t think anyone can imagine that finding himself in this sort of Hollywood scene, becoming this Tom Cruise of the event, while he was just trying to have a vacation, a Sukkot vacation, the Jewish holiday, with his family abroad, and eventually saving everyone on this plane, alongside other four people and many others who tried to help out as much as they could. And also, while doing that, they wanted to take care of the pilot who was stabbed. And they also tried to help him out. There was a doctor on the plane who approached him and tried to help out in any way he could to help save his life as well.

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Thank you for that description and that interview. That was amazing, Neria. Thank you. Thank you so much. The Israeli Defense Minister has called this an attempted jihadist terror attack. CBS Evening News Anchor Tony Dokoupil spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the incident on the plane earlier tonight. He says they don’t yet know the motivation of the attacker. I don’t think it was a hijacking. I think it looks like a suicide attempt simply because of what this hero Yaniv has described. When he went in, this guy was trying to jam the equipment between the two flights. It’s the pilot seats. He wasn’t sitting in the pilot seat trying to stabilize the plane. He was trying to jam the equipment. So that’s pretty good evidence, I’d say. But this is being– this pilot, the attacking pilot is now being interrogated in Saudi Arabia. He’ll be, I assume, moved very quickly to Dubai. He’s an Omani national. He’ll be investigated, interrogated, and we’ll join the interrogation and find out what happened there exactly. Mr. Prime Minister, the reason I ask is because what makes you sure this is attempted terror and not a mental health issue of some description? Well, it could be. I don’t know. We’ll find out soon. We’ve had signs that Iran, and particularly through its proxies, was intending to heighten terrorist attacks against Israel and Israeli nationals abroad. But I think it’s too early to say whether there was this Iranian collusion here. I think we’ll find out. Won’t take a long time. And you can see much more of Tony’s interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on cbsnews.com.