The executive producer of the documentary series Mayday, known in Israel and many other countries as Air Crash Investigation, said he could not believe that one of the show's viewers used it to help save a plane, after Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun credited the series with his actions aboard Flydubai flight FZ1073.
Alex Bystram told Kan's Reshet Bet that, by his estimate, the plane was about 90 seconds from hitting the ground. He said he has invited Hayun to visit the show's set and that the incident may one day become an episode of the series.
Speaking to CBS News on Thursday, Bystram said that if someone picked up a tip from the show about something in the cockpit and it worked, that was a fantastic byproduct. He said the show's simulations are realistic but that he never expected anyone to use them in a real emergency. Asked whether he would make an episode about the Flydubai incident, he said the show would do so if there were valuable lessons about aviation safety to be learned.
Hayun, a plumber with no flying experience, ran to the cockpit after the wounded captain, Smit Machchhar, managed to unlock the door. After helping restrain the co-pilot, who allegedly stabbed Machchhar and tried to crash the plane, Hayun said he pulled back on the controls as the jet dove. When Netanyahu met him at Ben Gurion Airport, Hayun told him he knew what to do because he watches Air Crash Investigation. He said the plane began to level out before another pilot on board took over.
The Canadian series, produced by Cineflix, has run for more than two decades and examines aviation disasters using flight data, cockpit recordings and dramatic reconstructions. It aired a 2022 episode on Flydubai Flight 981, which crashed in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in 2016. In the United States, the show airs as Air Disasters, the name President Donald Trump used when he retold Hayun's story to reporters this week.
