Exclusive | Crew of hijacked plane clashed with heroic Israeli passengers, demanded tied-up terror pilot be freed

The crew of the hijacked flydubai plane shockingly clashed with heroic Israeli passengers who subdued the ax-wielding co-pilot after he attacked the pilot — demanding he be freed, two men who helped secure the terror suspect told The Post in exclusive interviews.“They were asking us to untie the terrorist — we had no idea why,” said banking executive Tzvika Manes, one of the three civilians who took down the would-be hijacker.“They were saying to free the terrorist — we got instantly suspicious of them,” said real estate professional Daniel Schlichter, who was sitting in the second row, close to the cockpit .Manes, 40, was traveling with his wife and three daughters aged 11, 7, and 6, after a family vacation in Japan, when the co-pilot, identified by The Wall Street Journal as an Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, began hacking at the Indian pilot, Capt.Smit Machchhar, with a crash ax.The seriously injured Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door.

Manes, along with plumber Yaniv Hayoun and Asaf Rajuan, rushed to confront the attacker and overpowered him.Hayoun, a plumber, then managed to stabilize the nosediving plane using techniques he learned from the TV show “Air Disasters.”But after the three Israelis subdued the pilot and restrained him face-down with his hands tied behind his back — first with zip ties, then using headphone wires that Schlicter gathered from passengers.As he was subdued, Hayoun heard the terrorist cry, “Kill me, kill me” — apparently because he failed in his Jihadist mission, Manes said.Yet some crew members began demanding that he be freed.An argument ensued and the Israeli trio shot back that under no circumstances would the suspected terrorist be released.“They said, ‘You are not God, you are not going to kill him,'” Manes recalled.“We didn’t want to kill him, we just wanted him not to kill us.”Schlichter, 59, who was also returning from a vacation in Japan with his wife, and Manes both said that th...