Cairo | In a phone call with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, Capt. Smit Machchhar told him that before the attack the co-pilot wanted to pray and out of respect he turned away.

A few minutes later he said he felt a blow to the back of his head and then the blows kept coming.

Netanyahu told him he was amazed at his courage and his ability to stay cool under impossible conditions. “You saved so many souls ... You saved the spirit of the world,” he said.

The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a descent so extreme that part of the rudder was torn away, and aviation experts have marvelled that it didn't crash.

FlyDubai has said crew travelling on the plane helped to stabilise it and land. They haven't been publicly identified.

Both the captain and co-pilot were later taken to the UAE. The passengers, most of them Israeli, flew home later Wednesday on a separate plane, to cheers.