Mom Gave Her Four Daughters One Order As Hijacked Plane Plunged

An Israeli mother had her four daughters with her aboard Flydubai flight FZ1073 — and when the copilot attempted to hijack the plane, she gave them all one instruction: “pray.”

Lital Hirschl-Shahar, 39, was on her way home from a family vacation in Singapore and Thailand with her girls — aged 14, 11, seven, and five — and said that she knew something was wrong when she heard someone close to the front of the plane shouting that the pilot had been attacked.

“We heard a lady in business class shouting. She sounded so terrified, in a way I’ll never forget,” Hirschl-Shahar told The New York Post. “It all happened so fast, and the plane just started dropping down. It was so scary and crazy … We all thought we were going to die.”

“I was talking to God nonstop, believing prayer was the only thing that could save us. I told my daughters to pray, too,” she continued. “We needed a miracle, and I couldn’t help but think, ‘Is this how you’re going to die? Is this how your girls are going to die?’”

Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, despite his injuries, was able to get the cockpit door opened — and as soon as he did, several Israeli passengers charged into action. Plumber Yaniv Hayoun, who later told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he’d learned what to do while watching “Air Crash Investigations,” pulled the copilot out of the cockpit as he attempted to disable the aircraft’s instruments.

While others subdued the resisting terrorist, Hayoun rushed back into the cockpit and pulled the plane out of its downward trajectory. Another man came into the cockpit, saying that he was a pilot, and told Hayoun that he would take over.

Hayoun said that he stayed to watch the replacement pilot because at that point, no one could be certain that others had not been part of the copilot’s alleged plan to crash the plane in a 9/11-style attack. He said that he felt relieved to hear the pilot speaking to ground control, passing on information about the injured pilot and asking for medical help when they landed.

The plane initially landed in Saudi Arabia, after which another plane carried the passengers the rest of the way to Tel Aviv — their original destination.

“It was just a miracle wrapped in a miracle wrapped in a miracle,” Hirschl-Shahar said once they were all safely home.

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