The attack on FlyDubai pilot Smit Machchhar began with his co-pilot’s request to pray, the hero captain revealed Saturday, explaining how he had managed to wrench open the cockpit door while being hacked with an ax.

He had no idea that his second-in-command was Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, whose own country’s airline had barred him from flying out of concern over his extremist views, officials familiar with the situation told The Associated Press late Saturday.

Until the prayer request, Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv was “just a normal flight,” Machchhar told Israeli Prime Minister in a phone conversation the Israeli leader’s office released late Saturday, according to EuroNews. The request was “not out of the ordinary,” so Machchhar granted it and kept his eyes forward “out of respect,” he added. The last thing he expected was “a big blow to the back of my head” four or five minutes later.

“My first thought was that there was a catastrophic damage to the aircraft, and something is not right,” he told Netanyahu. “But then after that the blows kept coming one after the other. And that’s when I realized that it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

The co-pilot was hacking at him with an ax that’s kept on hand for emergencies.

Machchhar said he tried to stop him but could barely see after the initial blows blurred his vision. He felt the aircraft plunging and managed to open the cockpit door but the co-pilot slammed it shut.

“At this point I remember I was lying down on the cockpit floor and I felt the aircraft and the whooshing sound and people screaming,” he said. The plane had plummeted.

The briefly open door gave upfront passengers a glimpse of what was happening and the shriek of a mother who’d been waiting outside the lavatory door for her daughter further alerted them to the need for immediate action.

On the other side of the now-closed door were Machchhar and his attacker, still raining blows. It was obvious the co-pilot planned to crash the plane.

“I had one last fight left in me,” Machchhar said, realizing that “if I don’t do it I’m going to die. And that’s when I pushed against everything. I gave everything that I had and just went for the door and opened the door. And thankfully people were waiting to pounce back, took over the controls.”

Passengers on the 182-person flight, 150 of them Israeli citizens, had rallied on their side of the door and a handful of them rushed in. One subdued al-Hammami and grabbed the controls to stop the descent. Others tied up the co-pilot with headphone cables, while two pilots who’d been passengers safely landed the plane.

“There was a moment that I was fighting for my own life,” Machchhar told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi a day earlier. “But I also knew that I couldn’t let them die.”

Thanks to his last-ditch effort and the actions of a dentist, a plumber and the two pilots who’d been traveling to their next takeoff destination, among others, the flight made an emergency landing in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia.

Netanyahu invited Machchhar and Modi to Israel to bear a celebratory flame during Israel’s next Independence Day ceremony on May 11-12, 2027, an honor normally reserved solely for Israeli citizens.

“But I think here in this case, all of the citizens of Israel will embrace you,” Netanyahu said. “They do now, and they will then too.”

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