Captain Smit Machchhar trained as a pilot at Mainland Air in the New Zealand city of Dunedin for 18 months, beginning in 2008, the school’s CEO, Philip Kean, told 1News.

Kean said Machchhar “did very well” as a student and later returned to India where he worked as a recruiter for the school.

“We’re all very proud of him here and wish him a speedy recovery,” he said.

SpiceJet, in a post on X, praised Machchhar’s “heroic courage” and “selfless actions.”

“You are a hero to us all, Captain,” the airline wrote.

After he was injured in the cockpit, Machchhar was taken to a hospital and was in stable condition, the Indian Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, said late Wednesday.

Embassy officials were in contact with his family and Saudi authorities.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that he does not know the “exact background” of the Flydubai copilot who attacked the captain in an apparent attempt to crash the plane, “but he obviously hated Israelis.”

In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News, he was asked if there is any current indication of Iranian involvement in the attack.

“It’s too early to say,” he said.

“That is fanaticism and hatred of an incalculable level,” he added.

“The attacking pilot is now being investigated in Saudi Arabia. I think he’ll be taken to the Emirates where he comes from – or at least where he flew off from,” he said.

“We’ll be following and also possibly participating in this investigation.”

US president Donald Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi hailed the “hero” pilot who saved passengers from an attempted hijacking.

Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, fought off his co-pilot who stabbed him during an attempted midair attack on a flight to Israel.

Mr Trump said he spoke to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the incident. He hailed Captain Machchhar as a “hero” for fighting off the knife attack from the co-pilot, opening the cockpit door, and calling for help to foil a bid to crash the aircraft.

An Indian pilot who was repeatedly stabbed by his co-pilot during a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv has been hailed as a hero for helping prevent a potentially catastrophic crash involving more than 170 passengers.

Captain Smit Machchhar, who emphasises a “strong focus on safety” on his professional profile, was seriously injured after officials said his co-pilot attacked him with the apparent intention of crashing the aircraft.

Despite his injuries, Machchhar fought back and managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew members to overpower the alleged attacker.

Machchhar’s family lives in Ghatkopar East, Mumbai, and his parents were flown to Saudi Arabia early on Thursday, local legislator Parag Shah said.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Machchhar has 13 years of experience in commercial aviation. He previously worked for SpiceJet as a senior commander and line training captain before joining Flydubai in 2022.

Machchhar had initially planned to join his family’s textile business and was studying for a management degree with the aim of helping expand it when he stumbled upon an aviation seminar.

“That is where the aviation bug bit me,” he said on a podcast last year.

Benjamin Netanyahu has said that a “tremendous act of heroism” prevented a repeat of a 9/11-style crash of the Flydubai plane.

Recounting his detailed conversations with the passengers on the plane, Netanyahu told CBS that the plane was heading from Dubai to Israel.

“As they approached Israel, one of the co-pilots stabbed or hit with an axe the other pilot, an Indian pilot.

“And the pilot that was hit, bleeding profusely, fighting for his life, managed to unlock the pilot’s door,” he said.

An Israeli passenger sitting in row 18 reportedly heard screaming and rushed towards the cockpit. He was initially thrown aside as the plane plunged, but managed to force his way through the cockpit door.

He said he went through the door and saw the pilot who attacked the other co-pilot was trying to jam the equipment.

“Obviously, it looks like he wanted to obviously bring the whole plane down.

“[He] grabbed him from behind, pulled him back, then unbelievably took the stick, pulled it back. This is not a pilot. This is a plumber.”

The pilot has been identified as captain Smit Machchhar a Mumbai native who lived in Dubai, according to reports.

Hila Gaier, who was on board the Flydubai flight with her daughters and partner, described the tense moments when they all bid goodbye to each other as the hijacking attempt unfolded.

She said her daughters were scared as “complete chaos” broke out during the flight and the plane plunged.

She told Israeli public broadcaster Kan 11 Radio that her daughter was about to go to the restroom when the plane hit what she thought was “insane turbulence.”

“My daughters were hugging me, and we simply said goodbye to each other,” she said.

“I told them, ‘My beloved girls, I love you.’ My partner looked at me and said, ‘I love you.’ We were simply staring death in the face.”

Overhead bins opened, the power went out, and the communications system and screens all went down, Gaier said.

“You have no idea what’s happening, and it just keeps going and going,” she said.

“It’s been a complete nightmare.”She said the plane, carrying families with children, was filled with “terrifying screams”.

The incident has heightened security fears in Israel weeks before Israelis vote in the first election since the Hamas-led October 7 attack, with security a defining issue.

Donald Trump has suggested the co-pilot involved in an incident aboard a Flydubai passenger aircraft may have been a “terrorist” or was acting irrationally, as he recounted an extraordinary version of events relayed to him by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The US president told reporters on Wednesday that he had spoken to Netanyahu about the incident, which reportedly involved a confrontation between the pilots of a flight travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

“I think it’s an incredible story,” Trump said.

He claimed it appeared the “co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist, or perhaps a whack-job, and he stabbed the pilot”.

Trump then recounted an account he said he received from Netanyahu involving an Israeli plumber who had no experience flying an aircraft but intervened after hearing screams and realising something was wrong in the cockpit.

“Having never flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted it up, and levelled out the plane before it crashed,” Trump said.

The president acknowledged that he could not independently confirm the account.“Now this is the story that I heard. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got from Bibi,” he said.

Trump said Netanyahu told him the passenger knew what to do because he regularly watched the television programme Air Disasters.

“When asked why he did that, he said, ‘He watches that show Air Disasters,’” Trump said, adding that the passenger had apparently learned “sort of how to fly” from the programme.

Reports said the confrontation triggered a hijacking code before the aircraft eventually landed in Saudi Arabia.

The co-pilot of a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv is believed to have stabbed the captain in a possible attempted “terror attack” on Wednesday, forcing the plane to divert to Saudi Arabia where it landed safely, three Israeli officials said.

They said the cabin crew entered ⁠the cockpit and took control of flydubai flight FZ1073 from the United Arab Emirates to Israel, which diverted to Saudi Arabia as it flew over Jordanian airspace. One of the officials identified the attacker as an Omani national.

An Israeli official had earlier told Reuters the plane transmitted emergency signals after the pilots got into a physical altercation with each other.

Around the time the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told Reuters the ⁠incident was not believed to have been a hijacking, describing it as a “different incident”.

The Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief reporters, said Israel’s current assessment is that the incident was an attempted “terror attack” and not related to any kind of mental health issue with either of the pilots.