His face and clothes were smeared with blood in images from flydubai flight FZ1073. Hours later, the passenger identified as Yaniv was standing at Ben Gurion Airport telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how he had rushed into the cockpit, restrained a man at the controls and grabbed the controls himself as the aircraft plunged towards the ground.
Yaniv returned to the cockpit after realising that the Boeing 737 MAX was descending sharply.
Yaniv told Netanyahu that he and another passenger forced their way into the cockpit after trouble broke out during the flight. He said they found an injured pilot near the cockpit door and another man at the controls. There were no pilots in the seats,” Yaniv said, using the description adopted by Israeli officials for the suspected attacker. Yaniv said his first move was to get the man away from the aircraft’s controls. He said other Israeli passengers then helped restrain the man. He said he grabbed the aircraft’s controls as it tilted sharply. “I jumped back in there, grabbed the controls, started pulling the controls,” he said. “The plane started leveling out a little more, and then the pilot told me he was taking over from there,” he said.
“When I went in, I saw the terrorist on the controls, between the two seats. Yaniv’s next claim produced one of the more unusual details to emerge from the incident.
