Machchhar tells Modi he opened the FZ1073 door while the blows were still landing

Captain Smit Machchhar told Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday that he opened the cockpit door of flydubai flight FZ1073 while he was still being hit. "When I was down on the floor, I sensed that the aircraft was going down. And I knew for sure: this is the one last push, Smit. Just do it. The door is right there. Even as blows were still landing on me, I just managed to open it, sir. Then everyone else arrived." The call, parts of which were released by the Prime Minister's office and carried by DD India and ANI, is the first extended account from the captain since the 30 September diversion to Tabuk.

Machchhar said he has flown for 17 years and has been a captain for 11. "Even with my eyes closed, I know exactly what is happening with the aircraft," he told Modi. He said that when he feels pain he chants the Hanuman Chalisa, and that he was chanting it during the attack. He called Modi his biggest idol and said he had never expected to speak to him. He became emotional on the call. Modi answered that if he was not emotional there, then where would he be.

Modi told him the country was praying, that people were reciting the Mahamrityunjaya mantra, and that his decisions in fractions of a second had saved lives. He said he had spoken the day before to Machchhar's father, Bhupendra, his mother, Geeta, and his wife, Sonal, and had missed Jhavar and Bobby. He told Geeta that her name was Geeta and that she had raised Smit on the values of the Gita. He said Machchhar could call him whenever he needed, and that India was waiting to welcome him back.

The Indian embassy in Riyadh said the ambassador had visited Machchhar and his family in hospital and that the captain was in good health and recovering. Machchhar told Modi he was treating recovery as a slow journey and was confident he would be completely healthy. He did not give a discharge date.

The flight facts, already established, frame what he added. FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, left Dubai for Tel Aviv on 30 September. About two and a half hours out, the Omani first officer stabbed Machchhar. Flightradar24 data reviewed by The Irish Times showed a drop of about 18,000 feet in 90 seconds, then climbs and dives over the next 11 minutes, with ground speed moving from about 400 knots to more than 600. The transponder went to 7700, then briefly to 7500, the unlawful-interference code, which brought Israeli fighters up. Machchhar's account supplies the missing cockpit step: he was on the floor, judged the descent himself, and opened the door so others could enter.

Israeli officials had already said he managed to open the door. Passenger Tzvika Manes told Israeli media it took 20 to 30 minutes, with crew and other passengers, to restrain the first officer, who was bound with headphone cords. A spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu told Reuters that two off-duty pilots then landed the jet at Tabuk. Saudi authorities are holding the first officer. Netanyahu said on Thursday that the co-pilot had undergone Islamist radical indoctrination and that it was clear he was suicidal. Donald Trump has said Iran will be hit very hard if it is behind the attack, while saying the circumstances are still under investigation. Neither claim is in Machchhar's call.

What the call does fix is sequence and experience. Seventeen years flying, eleven as captain, a sensed descent, a decision to reach the door while blows were still landing, then everyone else. He assigned the others an equal role. That matches the passenger account of a long restraint, not a single blow. It also explains the 7500 squawk: someone in the cockpit, injured, still had enough function to tell air traffic he had lost control.

Flydubai suspended Tel Aviv flights after the diversion. El Al's first rescue flights to Dubai were cancelled after landing permission was revoked, The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday. Machchhar remains in Tabuk. The open item is medical, not rhetorical: when the captain who opened that door is fit to fly, and whether the inquiry publishes the cockpit-voice timeline that can test his sentence against the 90-second drop.