It was another routine morning flight for flydubai. Flight FZ1073 departed Dubai International Airport at 7:05 a.m. local time, bound for Tel Aviv. On board were 174 passengers, most of them Israelis, including 27 children. In the cockpit sat Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, alongside his Omani first officer, Hammam al-Hamami. The flight took off normally, crossing the skies of the United Arab Emirates before turning west and flying over the vast Saudi desert toward Israel. Flight attendants moved through the cabin, serving drinks and offering duty-free items for sale. Nothing gave any indication of what was about to happen.
Seated in row 11 was the Hayun family. Yaniv, a resident of Ness Ziona, is a plumber by profession who also operates a sewage-pumping truck and owns Y.H. Sewer Infrastructure.
Beside him sat his wife, Meital, and their two daughters. The family was returning from an extended trip to Vietnam and traveling home to Israel via Dubai. Like the other passengers, they sat calmly as the aircraft cruised through the clear blue sky.
The plane had reached the area near the Jordan-Saudi Arabia border when the drama suddenly erupted inside the cockpit. According to the captain’s later account, al-Hamami rose from his seat and turned away as though to pray. Machchhar, wanting to respect his colleague, did not look toward him. Moments later, he felt a powerful blow to the back of his head. The first officer had taken the emergency crash axe kept in the cockpit and struck the captain, apparently attempting to seize control of the aircraft.
The plane plunged, climbed again, and then entered another dive. According to publicly available flight-tracking data, during one of the most extreme moments, the aircraft dropped from approximately 30,875 feet to about 16,750 feet in less than half a minute. During the struggle, he also managed to open the cockpit door, which could not be opened from the outside otherwise.
As the aircraft plunged through the sky, the passengers had no idea that a life-and-death struggle was taking place just a short distance away, or that their fate might be decided within seconds. Yaniv Hayun, the plumber sitting in row 11, had no idea that this was the moment that would turn him into an international hero.
A SUDDEN JOLT
He had been dozing in his seat when a scream suddenly came from the front of the aircraft. It was a cry of terror. “There’s a stabbing in the cockpit!” someone shouted. The voice belonged to Tali Manas, who had been standing near the cockpit while watching over her daughter. She heard sounds of a struggle between the pilots from inside and called for help from the passengers. Yaniv was the first person to rise and run toward the cockpit.
“Until that moment, everything had been completely normal,” he recounts. “There was absolutely no reason for me to think anything was about to happen. Then suddenly I heard someone screaming from the front. She shouted that there was a stabbing, but she didn’t say exactly where it was happening.
“At first, I didn’t think it was a hijacking. I thought maybe there was some kind of fight between passengers. I got up from my seat to try to understand what was going on, and just as I stood up, the plane started shaking. The plane veered sharply to the left and then came back. At that point, the lights went out and all the electricity went down. Then the plane made another sharp turn to the left before leveling out again.
“Only then did I begin to realize that the problem was probably inside the cockpit. I shouted at people to fasten their seat belts and ran toward the cockpit. I had no idea exactly what I was going to find there. I knew there had been a stabbing and that something very serious was happening. As far as I was concerned, there was no time to sit and wait for someone else to do something.
“When I was about two meters from the cockpit, the really serious dive began. To me, it felt like an eternity. The plane plunged, and I was thrown sideways and down. I fell to the floor and tried to get back up, but I couldn’t. My entire body was being pulled downward. You try to move, but you can’t. You feel as though every part of your body is being dragged toward the floor.”
“Did you think that the plane was going to crash?”
“It all happened within seconds. You understand that the situation is extremely dangerous, but at a moment like that, you don’t have the ability to stop and start thinking through every possibility. You see that something is happening in the cockpit, and you know you have to get there. My family was behind me, and there were hundreds of other people on the plane. That was what was going through my mind. I had to save my family and the passengers.”
“How were you able to get back up after the plane went into the dive?”
“At a certain point, the plane leveled out somewhat. I’m not an aviation expert, but apparently the aircraft’s systems managed to stabilize it to some degree. The moment I was able to get back up, I got to my feet and continued toward the cockpit.”
“Who was standing near the cockpit door?”
“There was a crew member standing there. At least, I think he was a crew member. He was wearing a white shirt, so I assumed he was probably a pilot, but at that moment I didn’t know exactly who he was. He was standing by the door holding the handle, with his body leaning slightly downward. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to open the door or hold it closed.
“I reached him, moved him aside and opened the door. He didn’t resist me. It was somewhat difficult to open, and I think that was because the captain was lying against it and blocking the entrance with his body. He had apparently managed to unlock the door and then fallen to the floor, so I had to force the door open.
“When I got inside, I saw the attacker bent over inside the cockpit. His knees were on the controls, between the two pilots’ seats. He was trying to damage the equipment. He was right in the middle of the aircraft’s systems. At that moment, it was obvious to me that he had to be pulled out of there.
“The other pilot was lying on the floor, covered in blood. There was no one sitting in either pilot’s seat. I grabbed the attacker around the neck and put him in a chokehold. Then I started pulling him backward out of the cockpit as I stepped back. He resisted, but I managed to move him.”
“What went through your mind when you grabbed him? Did you immediately understand that he was a terrorist?”
“I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. There’s no time to think. You see someone inside the cockpit trying to damage the aircraft’s systems, and you have to stop him. That’s all.”
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