14,000 feet in 29 seconds: As plane plummeted, four heroes rose

The Boeing 737 Max carrying 174 passengers, mostly Israeli, plunged more than 14,000 feet in 29 seconds as passengers screamed. With flydubai flight FZ1073 accelerating toward the ground, four men rose from their seats and rushed toward the cockpit. If not for their actions, the plane would have crashed.

They were Yaniv Hayun, Assaf Rajwan, Zvika Manes and Dr. Shota Musayev.

First into the cockpit was Hayun, 38, from Nes Ziona. (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS Evening News that Hayun had sprinted from row 18, where he was sitting, and despite being thrown to the side during the plane’s nosedive, managed to enter the cockpit.)

The scene that confronted Hayun was of a bloody pilot lying on the floor and the co-pilot, who had stabbed him, bashing the control panel. (Little is yet known of the co-pilot. Israel says he is an Omani national.)

“I managed to pull him out backwards in a chokehold, and that was the most important thing,” Hayun said, according to Ynet. He was helped by other Israelis. Hayun then re-entered the cockpit, and grabbed the controls. He managed to stabilize the plane’s descent.

Netanyahu, who welcomed the passengers when they returned home at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Wednesday, asked Hayun how he knew what to do.

Hayun replied that he had watched “Air Crash Investigation,” the international name of a Canadian television documentary series about aviation disasters. The show is known as “Air Disasters” in the United States and “Mayday” in Canada.

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his admiration for Hayun at the White House. Trump told the press: “An Israeli plumber, never flew a plane, was rarely in planes … saw what was happening. [He was] strong. When you lift pipe all day you’re strong. … He ripped this guy out … threw him back … the passengers got him … And having never flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted it up and leveled out the plane.”

Said Hayun, “In my dreams, I never thought Trump would talk about me and refer to what I did. And I actually like his humor. It was amusing the way he described it. I’m not like Bruce Lee.”

Joining Hayun in subduing the co-pilot were Rajwan and Manes. Rajwan, returning with his family from a vacation in Thailand, told reporters that he and the others “acted on instinct.”

“It was just a shocking experience,” he said, Israel’s Channel 12 reported. “They say there are things like this in movies. It’s just like that. I didn’t believe that something like this could happen in reality.”

The passengers first realized something was wrong when they heard shouts. “We heard screams coming from the bathroom. The mother of a child came out of there screaming, and then we realized something had happened,” he said. “The plane lost control and went down 90 degrees. We already understood that there was no control over the plane. We realized that something had happened.”

At that moment, the door of the cockpit opened, covered in blood. “We went in, the group of guys. Someone named Zvika came in before me, and then he and two other guys came in and tried to take control of the [cockpit], and we succeeded,” he said.

‘Life is stronger than everything’

Two off-duty flydubai pilots were traveling on the plane. They were sitting in row six, a row in front of him, Rajwan said. After Hayun had leveled out the plane, one of them took over. They managed to stabilize the plane. Rajwan and the others held the suspect. They held him bound for 55 minutes until the plane landed.

“Life is stronger than everything, and we decided to fight for it,” Rajwan said.

Manes, CEO of Bank Leumi’s underwriting arm, one of the first three into the cockpit, told Israeli financial news site Calcalist: “My daughter was in the bathroom, my wife next to the cockpit heard shouting, screaming and noise from there.”

His wife then called to one of the pilots sitting with the passengers that something was going on. He opened the door and called for assistance. “He called for help, and I and two others went into the cockpit,” Manes said. “We three [himself together with Hayun and Rajwan] jumped. We neutralized the [co-pilot], the terrorist.”

He said a doctor on the plane treated the injured pilot, who was from India.

Manes also credited Dr. Shota Musayev, 47, who watched the other three spring into action and decided to move forward, too.

“My wife tried to stop me at first, but I saw that there were heroes there and I joined them,” he said, according to Ynet. “At that moment, we didn’t think for a second about our lives on the level of what would happen to us, but about how to save the whole plane.”

Musayev was actually a dentist, but he knew how to help the injured pilot. “I come from a family of doctors; my late father was a cardiologist, and my late mother was a biologist, so I knew what to do when I was in front of the injured pilot.

“The pilot told me that he wanted to live and not die here. There were moments when I thought we wouldn’t land on time because he was bleeding heavily, but after we stopped the bleeding, the situation stabilized.”

Musayev said he now thinks of Hayun, Rajwan and Manes as part of his new family.

“I wrote in the WhatsApp group we set up after the event that we were all reborn yesterday. We went through a historic event,” he said.

Another man who has not gone unnoticed is the wounded Indian pilot, Smit Machchhar, who had the wherewithal to open the cockpit door. He has been hailed as a hero by Netanyahu, Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“The pilot, in very bad shape—I guess he still is in very bad shape—but he had the sense to—amazing, in a way he was a hero—to open the door. You know, those doors are solid steel. You can’t get them open from outside. He was able to fall back and get the door open and scream,” Trump said.

Modi praised Machchhar’s actions during a video call with the wounded pilot on Friday. “Your courage, composure and calm saved many lives,” Modi told him. “The country can proudly say that Indians are not people who take lives, but people who are willing to risk their lives to save others.”

‘You put yourselves at risk to save others’

Israeli President Isaac Herzog also thanked the Indian pilot and praised all the Israeli passengers who intervened, including Tali Manes, wife of Zvika Manes, for alerting fellow passengers to the unfolding attack.

“You put yourselves at risk to save others and prevented a terrible disaster,” he said. “Today, the whole world saw the beautiful and courageous face of Israeli society.”

Addressing Tali Manes directly, Herzog said, “You heard that something terrible was happening, immediately understood the scale of the danger, raised the alarm, called for help, and did not stop acting even after the attacker had been subdued. The resourcefulness, responsibility and composure you showed in moments of mortal danger are civilian heroism in the fullest sense of the word.”

Herzog said he plans to recommend that all five receive the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism, Israel’s highest civilian honor recognizing acts of extraordinary courage and self‑sacrifice by citizens who are not members of the security forces.

Netanyahu meets with ‘heroes’

On Thursday, Netanyahu met at his Jerusalem office with four of the Israeli heroes who helped thwart the attack—Yaniv Hayun, Or Pardilov, Dr. Shota Musayev and his wife, Sigalit—the Prime Minister’s Office said.

The four recounted their struggle to save the aircraft, including how they subdued and restrained the Omani co-pilot. “We tied the stabbing pilot with the headphone cable. He was saying, ‘Kill me’—meaning that he failed at his mission and prefers to die,” they told Netanyahu.

“The entire world sees the Israeli heroism,” Netanyahu responded, praising their courage, resourcefulness and presence of mind, and promising them, “You will light a torch of civic heroism on Independence Day.”

The prime minister urged Israelis to follow their example.

“We are in a very sensitive time. There is an intent of our enemies to harm us,” he said. “I urge the citizens of Israel to learn from you, to keep their eyes open and be vigilant.”