From Neerja Bhanot To Smit Machchhar: Indians Who Became Heroes In Aviation Emergencies

In the chaos of a hijacked aircraft, there is little room for heroism as it is imagined afterwards. There is only a decision to be made: run, hide or stay.

Nearly four decades ago, Neerja Bhanot stayed.

On September 5, 1986, the 23-year-old senior purser of Pan Am Flight 73 was confronted with four armed hijackers after the aircraft landed in Karachi. She helped the cockpit crew escape, hid passengers' passports to prevent the hijackers from identifying American nationals and eventually opened an emergency exit to help passengers flee. When the gunmen opened fire, Bhanot shielded three children and was killed.

Forty years later, another Indian pilot found himself facing danger inside a passenger aircraft.

Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian pilot from Mumbai, was flying Flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30 when, according to Israeli officials, his co-pilot attacked him and attempted to take control of the aircraft. Machchhar was seriously injured but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew members to enter and overpower the attacker. The aircraft eventually made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

The circumstances are different. So are the eras. But both incidents point to the same fragile truth of commercial aviation: when something goes catastrophically wrong at 30,000 feet, the people inside the aircraft may have only seconds to prevent hundreds of lives from being lost.

When The Crew Became The First Line Of Defence

Bhanot's story unfolded during a traditional hijacking — an aircraft seized by armed men who wanted control of the plane and its passengers. She helped prevent the hijackers from taking control of the cockpit and later assisted passengers in escaping. The Pan Am Historical Foundation records that she remained on board during the 17-hour ordeal and lost her life while protecting children.

The 2026 Flydubai incident was different. The threat, according to Israeli officials, came from inside the cockpit itself.

The Boeing 737 Max 8 was carrying 174 people when the confrontation began. Passengers and a crew member forced their way into the cockpit and restrained the co-pilot, while two other Flydubai pilots travelling on the aircraft took over the controls. The aircraft transmitted emergency signals before landing in Tabuk. AP reported that much of the aircraft's rudder had been damaged during the descent.

The motive remains unclear. Flydubai said the underlying reasons were unknown and subject to a formal investigation, cautioning against premature speculation. Israeli officials, meanwhile, assessed the episode as an attempted terror attack.

That distinction matters. The episode may have resembled a hijacking in its consequences and triggered the aviation industry's hijacking protocols, but investigators have not yet established why the co-pilot attacked his colleague.

What is clear is the role played by the people inside the aircraft.

Machchhar was injured but continued fighting back. Passengers then entered the cockpit and helped restrain the attacker. A second pair of pilots took over the controls. A potentially catastrophic situation became an emergency landing instead.

It is here that the stories of Bhanot and Machchhar meet—not because the incidents were identical, but because both placed ordinary aviation procedures in the hands of people suddenly confronted with extraordinary danger.

How Hijackings Changed The Way The World Flies

The modern passenger aircraft is surrounded by rules that most passengers rarely notice.

The locked cockpit door. The security screening before boarding. The restricted access to the flight deck. The emergency codes transmitted silently to air-traffic controllers. Much of this architecture was built in response to earlier hijackings and attacks.

The transformation accelerated after September 11, 2001, when 19 hijackers took control of four US airliners and nearly 3,000 people were killed. Before the attacks, cockpit doors on American airliners were comparatively vulnerable. In January 2002, the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered operators of more than 6,000 aircraft to install reinforced cockpit doors.

The changes did not stop there.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, the UN body responsible for international aviation standards, subsequently required large passenger aircraft to have cockpit doors capable of resisting forced entry and certain forms of attack. The doors must remain locked during flight, with access controlled from inside the cockpit.

There is another layer that passengers may never hear.

Every commercial aircraft carries a transponder that communicates with air-traffic controllers. Three four-digit codes have internationally recognised emergency meanings: 7700 for a general emergency, 7600 for radio failure and 7500 for unlawful interference, a category that includes hijacking.

Flight FZ1073 transmitted an emergency signal and subsequently the 7500 unlawful-interference code, according to Flightradar24 data cited by Hindustan Times. The signal prompted Israel to scramble fighter aircraft because authorities feared a hijacking.

The system is designed around a simple idea: if the crew cannot safely explain what is happening, the aircraft should still be able to say that something is wrong.

But every layer of security creates its own complications. Aviation regulators acknowledge that a reinforced cockpit door, while designed to prevent attackers from entering, can create difficulties if a pilot becomes incapacitated. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency highlighted precisely that tension in a safety bulletin this year.

India has its own painful history with aircraft hijacking. India’s Anti-Hijacking Act, 2016 was explicitly shaped by the experience of IC-814 as well as the September 11 attacks. Its statement of objects says those incidents demonstrated how civilian aircraft could be used as weapons and necessitated a reassessment of aviation-security measures.

The law gives effect to international obligations stemming from the Hague Convention and incorporates the broader framework developed through the 2010 Beijing Protocol.

This is how aviation security has evolved: not in one sweeping reform, but through a succession of disasters, investigations, laws and protocols. Bhanot and Machchhar’s stories belong to different chapters of aviation history, but both reveal something the security manuals cannot quite capture: when the machinery of safety is tested, it is people who must ultimately act.