By Jonathan D. Salant, JNS
The U.S. president said he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who told him the passenger intervened after a pilot allegedly stabbed his colleague and the plane went into a nose dive.
U.S. President Donald Trump said that he talked to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after an incident in which a co-pilot on a flydubai aircraft heading to Tel Aviv allegedly stabbed the captain.
Trump told reporters at the White House that the Omani pilot was “perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job.”
He said that Netanyahu told him “an incredible story” about an Israeli plumber, who was sitting in the front of the plane, heard screaming, rushed into the cockpit after the door was opened and ran to the pilot, who had just stabbed his colleague, Captain Smit Machchhar.
The plumber, later identified as Yaniv Hayun, “ripped this guy out of his seat, threw him back, the passengers got him,” Trump said. “They were able to hold him, because he was going crazy. He was crazy.”
Hayun then used the control stick to level out the plane, which had been in a nose dive. Trump said that the plumber reportedly learned what to do from the Smithsonian Channel show “Air Disasters.”
“This is the story that I heard,” Trump said. “I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story I got from Bibi.”
Another crew that was on the plane then took over and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
Trump said that investigators didn’t know yet if the pilot who had stabbed his colleague was trying to crash the plane.
“They don’t know that kind of information,” the president said.
