Saved reputation of India, Indian pilots: PM's pointed message in call with Capt Smit

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while speaking to Smit Machchhar, the hero Indian pilot who averted a potential terror incident on board an Israel-bound flydubai flight, made a pointed remark about how the episode could have affected the perception of Indian pilots had events unfolded differently.

"Had this not happened, who knows what India would have had to face, what all Indian pilots would have had to endure, and how Indian pilots would have been viewed. You have saved everyone. You have done a very big thing," PM Modi told Machchhar, who is undergoing treatment in the UAE.

WHAT PM MODI TOLD SMIT MACHCHHAR?

The remarks come against the backdrop of social media chatter, mostly propagated by Pakistani handles, over how the Indian pilot might have been blamed had the incident ended differently.

PM Modi did not explicitly refer to those posts, but his comments about how Indian pilots would have been viewed echoed the conversation that's been raging on social media since the horrific incident.

The Prime Minister sought to suggest that what was at stake was not merely the 174 lives aboard the flydubai aircraft, but potentially the reputation of Indian pilots as a whole.

"The country can proudly say that Indians are not those who take lives, but those who are willing to risk their lives to save others," the Prime Minister further said.

Machchhar, being hailed as a hero worldwide, was brutally stabbed by the Omani co-pilot as he tried to take control of the aircraft and crash it. However, the brave Indian captain fought off the co-pilot and, in a crucial move, opened the cockpit door, allowing passengers to rush in and restrain the attacker.

Machchhar's quick thinking prevented an apparent hijack of a Tel Aviv-bound flydubai flight that had more than 170 people on board.

During his call with the Prime Minister, the 39-year-old father of two said he was reciting the Hanuman Chalisa as he was warding off the attack from the co-pilot.

"I had suffered so many injuries, but I told myself that I had to get up and act. If I did not, I would be dead," Machchhar told PM Modi.

THE MESSAGE BEHIND PM MODI'S REMARKS

Following the incident, several posts on X suggested that had the aircraft gone down, questions and blame could have been directed at the Indian pilot.

"God forbid if the plane had crashed, the entire blame would have been on the competency of the Indian pilot. Since he came out as a hero, he is not getting due credit from the entire world," one user tweeted after the incident.

Another posted, "If the co-pilot, a radical, had succeeded in crashing the plane in Tel Aviv, blame would have been placed on the captain."

The timing is significant. The social media chatter comes as the government is expected to publish the final report of its investigation into the 2025 Air India AI171 crash in Ahmedabad, a tragedy that sparked intense debate over the role of the pilots. There have been attempts by a section to spin the narrative around the role of the captain and the co-pilot on the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.

The government said the AAIB probe was at an advanced stage. The Air India flight crashed shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad for London on June 12. Of the 242 people on board, 241 died, while 19 people on the ground were also killed.

The preliminary report, released a month after the crash, said both switches controlling fuel to the engines had flipped almost at the same time after take-off.

A section of western media focused on a short part of the cockpit voice recording and suggested it showed the pilots were to blame for the crash.

However, the Centre has repeatedly clarified that no blame had been attributed to the pilots in the preliminary report.

It was against this backdrop that PM Modi's remarks about how Indian pilots might have been "viewed" if the flydubai incident had ended differently drew attention.