Mystery pilots who helped land in Saudi were ‘on-duty crew members’, says flydubai; passenger recalls moment ‘he acted like…’

The world was shaken by the attack on Indian pilot Smit Machchhar by his co-pilot on the Dubai to Tel Aviv flydubai flight FZ1073 carrying more than 182 people, and the alleged subsequent attempt to hijack the plane on Wednesday. While the danger was averted, it could have looked very different if there hadn't been two mystery pilots on the flight who turned back and ultimately landed the plane in Saudi Arabia.Passengers stand beside Flydubai Flight FZ1073, with damage visible to the aircraft's tail, after it made an emergency landing at Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, Wednesday, (AP)But who are the mystery pilots who stepped in to stabilise the flight as it hurtled toward disaster?As of Sunday morning, four days after the flydubai flight plummeted by around 17,000 feet amid the panic aboard, the identities of the two spare pilots who were miraculously on the plane still haven't been publicly released. Nor has any media outlet reported who the duo were.Flydubai has called them only on-duty crew members travelling on the plane. It's not clear why the airline hasn't said more.A passenger describes what the spare pilots didOne passenger, who was said to be at the front of the plane, described the men's actions in an interview with The Associated Press, though."This is one of the miracles," said Daniel Schlichter, who said he was seated in the second row.The two spare pilots are not present on every flight, but it does happen in the airline industry sometimes, under a practice which is called deadheading."In this case, they brought them because they should have brought the plane back from Tel Aviv to Dubai, and this is the only reason they were there," Schlichter said.The two pilots responded after screaming passengers discovered what was unfolding in the cockpit. They said the copilot, now identified as Omani national Hamman Al Hammami in media reports, was attacking the captain, Smit Machchhar from India, over and over, and blood was everywhere. The captain, while badly wounded, managed to unlock the cockpit door.After a passenger grabbed the copilot and pulled him out, and others grappled with the man to subdue him, Schlichter said that one of the travelling pilots practically hurdled the scrum to enter the cockpit and seize the controls."He was actually kind of jumping above the guys that were handling the terrorist, and he reached out to the pilot area and started to take over. And then the other guy, the other pilot, joined in, and they closed the door because they didn't want anybody else to be there," Schlichter said.Schlichter, like others, wasn't sure where the two men had come from. But whoever the first one was, he moved very quickly."He acted really like a hero, taking over the plane and reacted like he understood exactly what is going on, and I think we owe him our lives not less than the other heroes that went on the flight," Schlichter said.Once the two entered the cockpit and closed the door, Schlichter said he wasn't sure who did what inside. It took "quite a lot of minutes," maybe 10 or more, to stabilise the plane after a descent so extreme that part of its rudder was torn away.A mayday call was made as the men frantically sought a place to land.The hijacking worryMeanwhile, some of the frightened and wary passengers wondered about them and whether they could be trusted."After they managed to stabilise the airplane, actually they did not have any communication with us, and I have to tell you, I was worried about this," Schlichter said.He worried about an even worse situation - that the men might be "hijacking the plane into maybe Iran, or I don't know where, because we're actually not too far."But he said that after about 45 minutes, the pilots announced they would be landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and that everything was going to be OK.Schlichter said he decided to trust them after the announcement. And it turned out to be true.