Yaniv Hayun was sitting near the cockpit of FlyDubai Flight FZ1073 when the screaming started. The Boeing 737, en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv with 174 passengers — 27 of them children — had just begun a dive so steep it dropped more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds.
Hayun is a plumber. He's never flown a plane. His aviation training consists entirely of watching the TV show Mayday.
The co-pilot had stabbed the captain with a knife and was attempting to crash the aircraft to kill the plane of mostly Israeli passengers. When Hayun reached the cockpit door — which the wounded pilot had managed to unlock before collapsing — he found the attacker hunched over the instrument panel between the two seats, no pilots in either chair.
"I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and pulled him out," Hayun told Israeli media. "I called the Israelis who were with us, jumped back in and pulled the controls. I started pulling them back."
The plane leveled out. It landed safely at Tabuk Airport in Saudi Arabia. All 174 passengers survived.
Passenger Daniel, who described the two-to-three-minute dive as feeling "like an eternity," said simply: "It's hard to explain just how heroic they were." Another passenger, Adam, put a number on it: "Three or four people saved 180 lives."
Hayun wasn't alone. Israeli dentist Musaev Shota helped subdue the attacker. But it was Hayun who entered the cockpit, pulled the co-pilot off the controls, and then — having never touched a flight stick — leveled a commercial aircraft in a near-vertical dive.
When he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu afterward, Hayun explained how he knew what to do. "You see it on Mayday, Mr. Prime Minister." Netanyahu's response: "It's simply unbelievable what you did. You are a hero."
President Trump, who said he spoke with Netanyahu "at length about this event," called it "the most amazing story." Trump described the sequence in detail: "The plane was going sharply down at an unbelievable angle. Having never flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted it up, and leveled out the plane."
Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed the severity of the incident. The Boeing 737 exceeded its normal operating limits during the descent — meaning the aircraft was being pushed past what it was structurally designed to handle.
The co-pilot's motive is still under investigation. Trump noted that Israeli officials believe he "was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job." The captain is still in critical condition from the stabbing.
The 173 surviving passengers returned to Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday evening. One stayed behind — Hayun, reportedly, wasn't in a rush.
Billions of dollars a year go into aviation security systems, behavioral screening protocols, reinforced cockpit doors. On September 30, a plumber with a chokehold and a TV education did what all of it couldn't.
