From§Each

Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 3 October 2026

Indian pilot fought off the axe and was named Wednesday; the presidential hero call went to the plumber.

By SalStaff Writer

“Flydubai co-pilot used crash ax to hack at pilot in attempted ‘terrorist attack’: UAE official”, 3 October 2026 (Photo via New York Post — the original report)

As it ran on the front

Wednesday, 30 September. A Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv drops thousands of feet and reaches near-mach speeds while passengers help subdue a pilot who appears to be attacking the other one. The plane makes an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. That is NBC's account, filed the same day. The Hill's headline that day calls it a cockpit clash.

The New York Post puts a name to the man who took it: Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, the pilot who fought off his own first officer.…

…(cont) The same day, in the Oval Office, the president tells reporters what Benjamin Netanyahu told him on a call — that an Israeli plumber, a passenger with no experience operating a commercial aircraft, stabilized the hijacked flight. The Washington Examiner reports that day that the hijacking has already become a flashpoint in Israel's election season, with Netanyahu claiming credit for alerting the opposition and rivals saying he is working it as campaign material.

Saturday, 3 October. The filing lands. UAE prosecutors say co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, 29, an Omani national, used a crash axe to hack at the captain in an attempted hijacking of an Israel-bound flight, and they are charging it as an attempted terrorist attack. Whatever a cockpit clash is, this is not that.

Then comes the part that should make a person set down the drink. ABC News and Fox News report, attributing officials and sources, that al-Hammami had been suspended by Oman Air in 2024 and grounded as a security risk. Two years. One airline looked at this man and took him out of a cockpit, and on Wednesday he was sitting in a different one on a run toward Israel with a crash axe within reach. The four items in front of me do not say whether that assessment ever left Oman Air, or whether anyone at the next carrier could have asked for it. That is the entire question, and none of these four items answers it.

The thanks are routed from a prime minister in the middle of a campaign, through a phone call, to a Truth Social video.

The pilot who was stabbed has had a name since Wednesday. The axe was real, the grounding was 2024, and whether a warning at one airline ever reaches the next cockpit is the thing worth being paranoid about, because that is the part nobody has to announce.

“They flagged this guy in 2024 and he was back in a cockpit two years later — that isn't a mystery, that's a hiring desk that was never required to check, and nothing in these items says the warning travels. Meanwhile the credit for stopping him slid off the pilot who got cut and the passengers who piled in, and landed on a story two politicians liked better, inside four days. One of those men took an axe; the other got the phone call.”
Sal
“Look, the man's a hero, the president said so, and I don't know why anybody's got a problem with that. Did I say the plumber was the only one? That doesn't sound like me — everybody on that plane was heroic, the pilot obviously, him too, certainly. And the Oman business, that's Oman's business, you'd have to ask Oman, I'm not going to stand here and relitigate another country's personnel decisions.”
Chip

Earlier in this story

The receipts

Trump thanks man who helped save Flydubai flight: 'What a job he did, he's a hero'
The Hillmainstream§

President Trump on Friday morning thanked the Israeli plumber, Yaniv Hayoun, who intervened after a pilot stabbed his co-pilot and attempted to crash a Flydubai flight this week. In a video message shared on Truth Social, the president praised Hayoun, saying he “did an amazing job.” “He’s my kind of guy,”

· Pilot of flydubai plane who fought off ‘terrorist’ first officer on Israel-bound flight ID’d as Indian national from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026

· Trump says Netanyahu told him ‘Israeli plumber’ stabilized hijacked flight from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026

· Passengers helped subdue attacker on Israel-bound flight that diverted to Saudi Arabia from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026

· Flydubai hijacking divides Israel’s squabbling politicians during tough election season from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026

This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.