When Captain Smit Machchhar was stabbed inside the cockpit of a flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, he was left bleeding on the floor as the plane plunged thousands of feet.But even while seriously injured, the Mumbai-born pilot managed to open the cockpit door, allowing pᴀssengers and crew to rush in, overpower the attacker and regain control of the aircraft.What followed was a desperate chain of interventions by people on board, including pᴀssengers, a dentist and off-duty pilots, that helped save over 170 people aboard Flight 1073.Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Machchhar a “hero”, while Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised his actions in helping pᴀssengers and crew overpower the attacker.
Captain Smit Machchhar
Machchhar, an Indian citizen from Mumbai, was stabbed by his fellow pilot, an Omani national, during the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.The attack sent the Boeing 737 MAX into a steep descent, with the aircraft dropping nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds.Despite his injuries, Machchhar managed to release the cockpit door, allowing people outside to enter.Netanyahu said Machchhar “fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door” and enabled pᴀssengers and crew to overpower the attacker.Machchhar was taken to hospital after the plane landed safely in Tabuk, north-western Saudi Arabia. Indian officials said he was in stable condition and were in contact with his family.He had trained at New Zealand’s Mainland Air for 18 months in 2008 and 2009. The airline’s chief executive Philip Kean described him as an above-average pilot and said training for emergencies was one thing, but successfully handling such a situation in reality was “a whole different story”.
Yaniv Hayoun
Among the pᴀssengers who entered the cockpit was Yaniv Hayoun, whom Netanyahu described as a plumber.Hayoun said Machchhar was lying injured on the other side of the cockpit door when pᴀssengers entered and confronted the attacker.As people wrestled with the pilot, Hayoun said he moved towards the controls and began pulling them back, using what he had seen on television as his reference.Other crew members then took over and helped stabilise the aircraft.
Dr SH๏τa Musaev
Dr SH๏τa Musaev, a dentist travelling on the flight, was another pᴀssenger who rushed towards the cockpit.He told CNN that he found the attacker on top of Machchhar, stabbing him.Musaev said the captain was covered in cuts, particularly on his head and hands, and had lost a large amount of blood.He feared Machchhar would die before help arrived.Musaev also helped restrain the attacker, using headphone cords and plastic zip ties to tie him up.
The off-duty pilots
Pᴀssengers also reported that two relief pilots were travelling on the aircraft and entered the cockpit during the emergency.One pᴀssenger, Almog Itali, said the relief pilots included a British pilot and helped pull the aircraft up, stabilise it and guide it towards Saudi Arabia.Other reports differed on their nationalities, with some identifying them as South African or New Zealand pilots.Their exact role has not been independently established in the accounts available, but pᴀssengers said they were among those who helped regain control of the aircraft.The rescue was not the work of one person.Pᴀssengers and crew members entered the cockpit after Machchhar opened the door and helped overpower the attacker.Their intervention came as the plane was struggling to recover from its steep descent.One pᴀssenger described the plunge as feeling like “mᴀssive turbulence” lasting 20 to 30 seconds.The aircraft eventually landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.Aviation experts said the forces involved were severe. Former United Airlines pilot and aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said he was surprised the aircraft did not break apart, while another expert said the remaining altitude may have been crucial to the recovery.Flight 1073 ended in a safe landing and the people on board made it possible.
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
