Yaniv Hion, the Israeli citizen credited with helping stop Wednesday’s attempted terror attack on a plane bound for Tel Aviv, said that he had learned what to do from a television show.
Hion, while recounting what had happened aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073, told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he knew what to do to pull the plane out of its dangerous dive because he watched “Air Crash Investigation” — a show that features dramatized retellings of disasters and near disasters aboard aircraft.
Hion first described the chaos as the plane began to dive and said that when he and several crew members attempted to get into the cockpit, it was only because the wounded pilot had been able to open the door from the inside that they were able to reach the terrorist who had stabbed him.
The Omani co-pilot, identified as a radical Muslim who refused to shake hands with women, was attempting to destroy the flight controls and disable the plane when the cockpit was breached — but Hion and the others were able to pull him from the cockpit and subdue him.
“We pinned him down to keep him secure and then I jumped into [the cockpit] and pulled the controls,” he said.
That was when Hion explained that he had pulled backward sharply to right the aircraft and pull it out of the dive. When Netanyahu asked how he had known what to do in that moment, Hion said simply: “I watch ‘Air Crash Investigations,’ Mr. Prime Minister.”
Experts have since suggested that the plane was a mere 40 seconds from disaster when Hion pulled back on those controls.
Hion also said during their meeting that he was a flight instructor, adding that someone else had taken over after he initially grabbed the controls and leveled out the plane: “I’m a flight instructor. That’s another thing I teach. And the plane started leveling out a little more. Then the pilot told me he was taking control from there.”
“Air Crash Investigation” is a Canadian show that has been running for 25 seasons, and is described on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) as a “dramatized reconstruction of real-life air disasters, along with interviews with aviation experts and eyewitnesses.”
“This TV series depicts major real-life air disasters. Each episode features a detailed dramatized reconstruction of the incident based on cockpit voice-recorders and air-traffic-control transcripts, as well as eyewitness accounts, interviews with aviation experts, including interviews with investigators who dealt with the disaster, and sometimes even actual footage,” another description read.
Netanyahu credited Hion’s quick actions — as well as those of the pilot who opened the door, the other civilians who were able to take down the terrorist, and the off-duty pilots who brought the plane down safely — with preventing a major disaster.
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