Photo: AFP
Details continue to emerge as to what happened aboard a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv Wednesday afternoon. We know that the co-pilot, an Islamist radical, attacked the pilot of the plane with a knife, and the plane started to plummet. Somehow, the bloodied pilot was able to open the cockpit door, allowing a passenger, a plumber by trade, to subdue his attacker; meanwhile, the plane continued to plunge some 17,000 feet before two pilots who happened to be riding on the flight took over the controls and stopped the nosedive. 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program discussed what happened on the flight and, more importantly, how the actions of a few level-headed and quick-thinking people prevented a real tragedy from occurring in the skies over Saudi Arabia.
Larry sung the praises of the pilot and the plumber, and drew some parallels to a flight that occurred 25 years ago: “This is an absolute miracle that happened, and I think about, right away, my mind goes to United Flight 93, and how I wish they had the same luck, and I wish they had the same ability to level off the plane because man, what a miracle that would be. But it’s the same type of thing- terrorists taking over a flight, the passengers go to fight back- in this case they had a pilot helping them to get back into the cockpit- and they were able to do, with pure luck and a lot of heroism, what they couldn’t do on United Flight 93.”
Curtis lauded the quick thinking passengers who subdued the co-pilot and gave the pilots who happened to be on the flight a chance to get in the cockpit and rescue the nose-diving jet: “Six guys kept their wits about them and rushed into that cockpit to assist in restraining the co-pilot, who was just stabbing anybody within proximity after taking out the pilot himself- just amazing resolve amongst everybody to get that flight safely back into Saudi Arabia so that it could land and then eventually back to Tel Aviv.”
Photo Credit: Getty Images