During their meeting after Hayoun arrived in Israel, he recounted to Netanyahu what happened aboard the aircraft and how he and other passengers managed to enter the cockpit and restrain a man suspected of attempting to take control of the plane.
At the beginning of the meeting, Hayoun told Netanyahu that he had asked for his luggage to be brought to him so he could change out of clothes stained with blood before meeting the Prime Minister.
Netanyahu immediately embraced him and called him a hero. He then asked how Hayoun had managed to enter the cockpit.
Hayoun responded by referring to the name of Israel’s 2025 military operation against Iran, Operation Rising Lion, a phrase drawn from the Bible, Numbers 23:24, which says: “Behold, a people rises like a lioness.”
Netanyahu thanked him, saying that if the aircraft had been hijacked and brought to Israel, nobody knew what might have happened.
Hayoun then continued describing how the incident began.
“First, the lights went out, and the atmosphere changed,” he said.
Hayoun and another passenger, whom he later learned was an off-duty pilot with the airline, tried to force open the cockpit door but failed because Captain Smit Machchhar had collapsed against it.
Hayoun said that before the aircraft landed, Machchhar had managed to open the door, allowing him and other passengers to push their way inside.
“I entered the cockpit and saw one pilot lying on the floor and another man at the flight controls. There was another man who entered with me. I grabbed the co-pilot by the neck, held him tightly and pulled him out of the cockpit,” Hayoun said.
Netanyahu asked what the man at the controls had been doing. Hayoun replied that he believed the man had been trying to damage the controls.
Hayoun said he immediately grabbed the flight controls and pulled them to bring the aircraft back on course.
“I grabbed the flight controls and pulled them, and the plane returned to its course,” he said.
Netanyahu, sounding surprised, asked how Hayoun himself had managed to bring the aircraft back on course.
Hayoun laughed and replied that what he had done was something he had seen in videos.
He said that once the aircraft was back on course, the off-duty pilot who had been travelling as a passenger took over control of the plane.
Netanyahu thanked Hayoun and told him: “If you had not been there, this could have been another 9/11.”
The reference was to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda in the United States.
Hayoun replied that he had simply done what he believed was the right thing to do.
