Living on the Razor's Edge: Reflecting on Fly-Dubai Terror in the Air

Photo by John McArthur on Unsplash

An Hour Away from the Abyss

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been privileged to volunteer as a family support mentor to young families navigating extensive reserve duty and the ups and downs of life. Over the recent holidays, a family I’ve grown very close with took a long-awaited trip to Thailand.

I knew they were heading back to Israel around the same time news broke out on September 30, 2026 of a terrifying terrorist attempt to kill the pilot and to crash a Flydubai aircraft over a populated area in Israel. I knew their route likely went through Dubai, so I quickly sent off a text: "Hope you're on your way back safely! Are you flying through Dubai?"

No answer.

A few hours went by, and that quiet, familiar knot started tightening in my stomach. I wrote again. Still... silence.

Finally, a few days later an email popped up in my inbox:

"Hi Ronnie, thanks for checking in. We landed a few days ago. Actually, we were on the flight out of Dubai just one hour before that flight. We're a bit shaken, grateful that we are alive and trying to get ourselves back home in body-mind and spirit."

Sixty minutes. A single hour was all that separated a peaceful flight home with young kids from stepping right onto the edge of a nightmare and to a likely death.

It was one of those moments that knocks the wind out of you. It reminds you of something we all try so hard to forget every day: we’re all playing a game of life where we don’t really know the rules, we can’t see who’s making the calls, and so much of what happens next is completely out of our hands.

The Unrehearsed Symphony

As the news unfolded and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia, I couldn't stop thinking about what happened inside that plane cabin. I could simply not go on with my daily life after imagining the unimaginable. An event of terror hurling 127 passengers within seconds from the relaxed comfort and sleep on board a plane coming home from vacation into the petrifying hysteria that their lives may soon be over.

In the interviews published afterward - like the stories shared in this video about the heroes of that flight—you see a much larger story, an amazing human tapestry. Nobody had a script. Nobody was prepared. But when terror hit, some people didn't just freeze - they clicked into an unrehearsed, almost miraculous symphony of action.

It all begins with the incredible courage of the Indian pilot, Smit Machchhar, who after being stabbed in the back by the Omani co-pilot /terrorist, was lying on the floor covered in blood, He somehow managed to click the release to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to gain entry, overpower his attacker and save 174 passengers onboard. Had he not had the resolve and energy to open the cockpit door all passengers would have died.

Following this incredible act or courage were a whole spectrum of people who rushed in and miraculously started to act together to save themselves and the whole plane. There was the cry of the mother who felt something terribly wrong as the plan took a sudden drop in altitude. These cries alerted the four courageous Israeli men, normal everyday citizens who were traveling with their wives and children, to sprint forward toward danger without a second thought, driven by that raw, protective parental instinct. They stormed the cockpit to pull out the captain who was lying on the floor hemorrhaging, his body blocking the cockpit door. These brave men overcame the attacker, subdued him physically while another Israeli man pulled out the chords of the headphones to allow the men to tie up the attacker, who was eventually handcuffed by one of the staff.

After storming the cockpit, one of the Israeli men, a man named Yaniv Chayun, a plumber by trade, let others continue to wrestle with the attacker as he attempted to get to the controls of the flight which was nose-diving out of control. Yaniv said: “I jumped back, grabbed the controls, and started pulling back the handles”, the way he had seen on television shows. Relief pilots who were on board then came into the cockpit and were able to regain control of the flight.

They later learned that the plane’s rudder had been damaged. During the steep nose-dive, the plane plunged from 34,000 feet to around 17,000 feet, leaving less than 40 seconds before an inescapable crash. Pulling up at that safe altitude allowed the pilots to regain control just before thicker air at lower heights would have ripped the overspeeding aircraft apart. 

Cries on the plane- “Is there a doctor on board?” brought forth Dr. Shota Mosayov, a dentist who administered critical life-saving care without standard trauma medical gear. He saved the pilot's life, the hero who enabled the "miracle" to happen.

The heroes of the flight described how it seemed like everyone found and performed a role to help the plane and the passengers survive.

It was the mother of the young child who first cried out that something was terribly wrong in the cockpit as she was accompanying her child to the bathroom. Her cries caused the passengers to bring their attention to what was going on. Some passengers set up mobile hotspots, tracking GPS coordinates, and finding ways to make calls out of hostile airspace to let families and authorities back home know they needed help. Others were filming what was happening.

There were those people who opened a prayer book to recite psalms, which strengthened and gave hope to some. Crew members, out of great confusion and chaos, challenged the Israeli men to untie the Omani co-pilot attacker, claiming he was not a threat anymore.

Asaf Rejwan, one of the Israeli men who stormed the cockpit said: “We were suspicious of the crew, we did not know if there were other collaborators on board. We just told them that now we were in control and decide what will happen here.” Eventually, the crew understood the situation and went about comforting and assuring the passengers that they were all safe.

Instinct, Choice, and the Human Spirit

Listening to these stories, I feel a familiar sense of awe watching my fellow Israelis step up in the face of crisis. There’s something in our shared culture - a habit forged over generations -that knows how to switch from everyday life to fierce danger, assume mutual responsibility in a single heartbeat. If only we could be half as effective when not facing such crises…

Of course, luck played a massive role. All aboard could have easily perished. But luck wasn't the whole story. People stepped up. A whole “symphony” played out which totally evolved from the moment. These individuals rose to meet the petrifying situation and took responsibility.

It got me thinking deeply about what actually happens to us when we’re pushed to the edge. Is it just animal instinct? Or is it something more? Rejwan said: “We were like animals, reacting in ways we can even recall to save everybody.”

Science tells us that when terror strikes at 30,000 feet, your brain’s survival alarm goes off instantly. There’s no time to sit back, gather data, or weigh your options like a game of chess. The adrenaline hit is automatic.

Animal instinct alone makes you want to freeze, run, or panic. But what happened in that cabin was something more, to my mind. There were people- many people-taking that raw survival adrenaline and channeling it into purpose, care, and courage. And they were communicating and collaborating with each other for a joint purpose- to live and not die.

Viktor Frankl, the famed psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and developer of logotherapy talked about this extensively: between the shock of what happens to us and how we react, there is a tiny space. In that space, we get to choose who we are going to be. Frankl talked about the “will to meaning” as something very tangible, very real- far, far from a stale intellectual concept. Meaning is “of the moment”, and here was meaning in its clearest, most terrifying appearance that could not be misunderstood.

Instinct gave them the engine, but their inner values held the steering wheel. Values are often buried deep inside us, at times we are not even aware of them. It takes the catalyst of life’s events to bring fort that which is most profound, most powerful and most meaningful existentially.

Can We Ever Really Prepare?

None of us can rehearse how we will react if the ground falls out from under us tomorrow. We can't script it and may we never know such perilous situations.

But I really believe we build the soil for those moments every single day. The way we react in a crisis isn't something we invent on the spot; it comes out of how we live when things are quiet. It’s built in the small, everyday choices we make to pay attention, to care about the person next to us, and to choose responsibility over looking away.

When the unexpected hits, we don't suddenly become someone new. We fall back on the inner stance we've been building all along.

Living at the Edge

What happened on that Flydubai flight was extreme. But in a way, it’s a mirror for the life we’re all living.

The truth is, we are always living at the edge of the world. A phone call, a traffic light, a chance meeting with a stranger, a doctor’s visit, or a sudden turn of events can strip away our cozy routines in a second. Life is change, change is not just part of life, it IS the very essence of life- we just don’t always recognize it until it “hits us in the face”.

Life is so breathtakingly precious

We live on a razor's edge between being here and not being here. Flydubai flight 1073 is an extreme, terrifying event that ended in a miraculous way where many heroes saved the lives of at least 173 people. And with this “miracle” we can learn much about who we are and can be in our lives- even at the edge.

Knowing how fragile it all is doesn't make me fearful. It wakes me up. It makes me want to drop the nonsense, love a little deeper, choose life with radical hope, and make the absolute best of this incredible gift we've been given.

To live and love our lives. Every minute of it. In gratitude and deep hope. We never know what awaits us.