Passenger who foiled 'deliberate airliner crash'... "I pulled back on the control yoke as I'd seen on TV"

[Financial News] One of the passengers who narrowly foiled an attempt to deliberately crash an airliner bound for Israel said he was able to rush into the cockpit and operate the controls amid the chaos because he had watched a TV series about aircraft accidents.
According to CNN on the 30th, Yaniv Hayun, who was aboard a flydubai flight from Dubai carrying more than 180 passengers, described the tense moments when passengers joined forces to subdue the suspect.
He said it was initially difficult to open the cockpit door because the stabbed pilot was leaning against it.
When he finally managed to open the door and enter, he could not see anyone at the controls.
Hayun said, "There was no pilot in the cockpit. One was lying on the floor, and the other was on top of the cockpit panel."
He immediately called for help from the other passengers on board.


He said, "I shouted to the other people on board, and two came to help," explaining that they subdued the suspect by choking him and dragged him out of the cockpit.
After clearing the obstacle, Hayun said, "I returned to the cockpit, grabbed the control yoke and pulled it back," adding that everything happened within just a few seconds.
When asked how he knew that he had to pull back on the control yoke, he replied, "I watched 'Air Crash Investigation'! I really did!"
Known in South Korea as 'Air Crash Investigation,' the program reconstructs real-life aircraft accidents using black-box data, communications records and other evidence.
Shota Musayev, a dentist who treated injured passengers on board at the time, testified that when he ran to the cockpit, the suspect was on top of a pilot lying on the floor and was stabbing him with a knife.
He described the urgency of the situation, saying, "The pilot's entire body was covered in cuts, and his hand was almost severed in two."


According to The New York Times (NYT), after pulling the suspect away, Musayev and another passenger tied him up with a headphone cable tie and treated the injured pilot on board.
Another passenger, Assaf Rajuan, told NYT that about five other passengers joined him in helping subdue the suspect.
He said, "We subdued him very quickly, and there was no real fight. We acted instinctively."
He also recalled, "What scared me most was not knowing where we would land. All I could see below the plane was desert."
The flydubai airliner bound for Tel Aviv turned toward Saudi Arabia and made an emergency landing after the onboard knife attack.
According to Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), no passengers were reportedly injured; the pilot, co-pilot and two crew members were injured.

[email protected] Lee Seok-woo, international affairs correspondent Reporter