Hero passenger on FlyDubai flight: “I decided that we are going to survive”

Updated on: October 4, 2026 / 9:57 AM EDT / CBS News

This past Wednesday, they were strangers on a plane. By Friday, they were family. It was the first time hero passengers Daniel Schlichter, Zvika Manes, Tal Samuel and Asaf Rajuan had seen each other since those terrifying moments on FlyDubai's Flight 1073.

"That minute is probably the longest minute of my life," said Schlichter about the plane's terrifying freefall. "And the first thing that went up is actually 9/11. And I said, 'How can it be? How can we end this life like that?' You see all your life and you think about what is important. And just holding my wife's hand and saying, 'If we have to go, we have to go.'"

Their Boeing 737 Max was nosediving into the Arabian Desert nearly at the speed of sound. The co-pilot from Oman had stabbed the captain, grabbed the controls, and tried to crash the plane full of Israeli passengers. The jet plummeted 14,000 feet in seconds. They were less than 30 seconds from crashing, with G-forces Manes described as being "like a roller coaster."

What they couldn't have known was that inside the locked cockpit, Captain Smit…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/