‘Blood everywhere’: The heroes who saved plane from attacker

Passengers who helped restrain the Flydubai attacker have spoken out about the experience after being labelled heroes for their actions.

Yaniv Hayoun, who was the first man break into the unlocked cockpit as the plane plummeted through the sky, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after finally arriving in Tel Aviv.

“You are a hero. You deserve a global medal of honour,” Netanyahu told him, according to post on the official X account of the Israeli prime minister.

On his personal account, Netanyahu called him a “true hero”.

Hayoun, still with blood on his shirt, told Netanyahu in a filmed meeting that when he entered the cabin he saw the alleged attacker standing between the pilot seats.

“He was trying to destroy the controls in order to disable the plane,” Hayoun said.

“I grabbed the terrorist, put him in a chokehold, and first of all pulled him outside.

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“I called out to a bunch of Israelis on board, and two other guys came over. We pinned him down.

“I jumped back, grabbed the controls, and started pulling back the handles.”

Hayoun said he knew what to do in a nosedive after watching many episodes of Air Crash Investigation.

Netanyahu said Hayoun was a plumber.

“I asked him, what do you do for a living? He said, well, I’m a plumber and I unclog sewage clogs,” Netanyahu told CNN.

“And I said, you really unclogged a big one today.”

One of the other passengers, Assaf Rajuan, said they had restrained the alleged attacker for most of an hour.

“It wasn’t a prolonged battle; we neutralised him very quickly - there was no real fight,” he told CNN.

“There were no punches thrown, nothing like that.”

Rajuan appeared to have suffered a small cut to the head in the altercation.

The plane’s 180-strong passenger contingent was the source of two other major strokes of luck.

Two pilots, who Flydubai claimed were a “reserve crew”, were able to come forward and stabilise the plane.

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Passenger flights sometimes include off-duty pilots who are headed to fly a plane at another destination.

Also on board was a dentist, Dr Shota Musaev, who had the medical training to treat the seriously wounded pilot, Smit Machchhar, who unlocked the cabin door after being stabbed.

“I started helping the pilot because he had lost a lot of blood and was in bad shape,” Musaev told CNN.

“He was covered in cuts - his head, his hands - they were practically sliced open, almost severed in two.

“I think that if we had waited even a few more moments, we would have lost him; his blood pressure had plummeted, he suddenly lost consciousness, and there was blood everywhere.”

Musaev also recounted to the media about subduing the attacker, revealing he had been restrained using headphone cords and plastic zipties.

The group who saved the flight then organised people to stay in key positions throughout the cabin in case a second attacker was present.

Netanyahu said the heroic actions of the passengers had prevented a “9/11 style disaster”.