As world leaders applaud Captain Machchhar for his commendable heroism, this is not the first time that an Indian citizen sacrificed their life to save Israeli citizens amid a major catastrophe. Indian-origin pilot Captain Smit Machchhar saved 174 lives on a Tel Aviv-bound Flydubai flight after overpowering a rogue co-pilot mid-air, repeating a historic act of bravery that happened almost two decades ago.
Armed terrorists attacked Nariman House (Chabad House), where Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, who lived with their two-year-old baby named Moshe were residing. Sandra Samuel, an Indian nanny working for the house, heard gunfire and found herself trapped inside the building as terrorists shot at everybody. In the midst of the chaos, she heard the crying of baby Moshe, whose parents were killed by the gunmen. Ignoring her own safety, she took hold of the child and together with fellow worker, Qazi Zakir Hussain, she escaped the siege. It was the brave rescue of Sandra Samuel that spared little Moshe of sure death in the Mumbai rampage. Post the event, Samuel visited Israel to take care of the kid and earned honorary Israeli citizenship in appreciation of her remarkable valor. The same spirit of selflessness has been revived in the sky. Though the captain received severe knife cuts, he unlocked the cockpit door for passengers, crew members, and two pilots in a leave from Flydubai to overpower the attacker.
Due to the violent fight taking place in the cockpit, the plane was sending emergency codes indicating the hijacking of the plane and dropping to the altitude of more than 14,000 feet within minutes. Eighteen years prior to Captain Machchhar’s courageous act, another great tale of Indian courage played out amid the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. In September 2026, Captain Smit Machchhar has shown the same courage in the face of an attack that had posed a threat to an overloaded Israeli citizen commercial flight. On September 30, 2026, while flying over Tel Aviv from Dubai in Flydubai Flight FZ1073, at 33,000 feet in the air, an Omani co-pilot started a sudden attack by knifing into the cockpit of the aircraft.
