Adam PolovincikA man has described how he hugged and reassured his two young children as their plane suddenly descended after one pilot stabbed the other in an attempt to seize control of the flight.
A Flydubai plane plunged more than 17,000ft (5,200m) in less than two minutes around two hours into its journey from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, before passengers and crew overpowered him and retook control to land safely.
Adam Polovincik told BBC Newshour that he hugged his six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter “really hard” and tried to stay calm for them as the attack unfolded.
He praised the pilot who was stabbed and passengers who fought off and subdued the attacker, saying they were “true heroes”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said it was too early to say whether Iran was involved in the attack, but that the alleged attacker had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination”.
Polovincik, who was sitting in aisle 13, was flying home with his wife and children after an “amazing” holiday in Singapore and Thailand.
He said there had been a “huge degree of panic” on the plane as there was a “very, very, very sharp decrease in height”.
He thought at first that this was simply because of an air pocket, but “it took a lot of time, almost a minute”.
Everyone who had not been seated fell to the floor, the 40-year-old said.
“After a couple of seconds, we started to hear screams. ‘There is blood, there is stabbing, we need help’,” Polovincik said.
“At the end of the day, you understand very, very quickly that literally there is nothing that you can do at this point in time,” he said.
Polovincik, a performance marketing analyst, said he tried to “be cool” for his children.
“You just tell them, yeah, everything’s going to be all right. It’s just a malfunction in the aeroplane, there is a crew under control, the passengers are helping them, [you] hug them really hard and try to keep your face so it doesn’t look very panicked, try to keep your tone of voice.”
But he said there was naturally a “high degree of panic” on the flight.
There were lots of families with children on the plane because the flight took place towards the end of a Jewish holiday period.
After about 10 to 15 minutes, he said a passenger in the cockpit told them the incident was “under control” and other staff were flying the plane.
In a video released by Netanyahu’s office, passenger Yaniv Hayun described putting the attacker in a chokehold and pulling him out of the cockpit before other passengers helped pin him down.
Two other pilots who were onboard the flight then took over the controls and safely landed the plane, which had been carrying more than 150 passengers.
Polovincik said: “After they told us that the situation is, again, ‘under control’, then it was a bit harder to tell the kids that it’s malfunctioned because people start to walk around the aeroplane covered with blood.”
Polovincik was praised Indian pilot, Capt Smit Machchhar, who fought off his attacker and opened the door to the cockpit, allowing passengers to step in.
“Without him opening the door, we’re probably not speaking here right now,” he said, adding that he “can’t even start saying our gratitude for this human being”.
Polovincik said that, although he was not religious, he could not escape “the feeling that it was the hand of God yesterday” that had put “the pieces on the board in the way that they did”.
“It’s remarkable.”
After the situation onboard was brought under control, the flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia, where Polovincik stressed the passengers, who were almost all Israeli, were treated well.
“They brought us water and food and coffee and even sweets for the kids – even though we don’t have any diplomatic relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The alleged attacker, who was arrested in Saudi Arabia, is expected to be transferred to the United Arab Emirates, from where the plane departed, Netanyahu told Fox News.
The passengers were taken to Tel Aviv on another flight later on Wednesday and were greeted at the airport by crowds of onlookers playing music, singing, dancing and waving Israeli flags.
Polovincik said it had been “such a terrible ending” to an amazing family trip and that it would take some time for his family to come to terms with what had occurred.
