'He's a hero': a friend speaks up for the stabbed Flydubai captain on ITV News
The short drew about fifteen times the channel's usual first day, ahead of its Christa Pike report and its footage of prisoners walking free early.
ITV NewsStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 223,070 views a day, 15 times a normal first day on this channel (14,782).
‘He’s a hero’: Friend on pilot stabbed in cockpit attack
A friend's tribute traveled. ITV News' short about Captain Smit Machchhar, the Flydubai pilot stabbed in his cockpit on a flight to Tel Aviv, passed 130,000 views in its first ten hours. A new short on the channel usually finds around 15,000 viewers in a full first day.
The clip is built around someone who knows him, and its title carries the friend's verdict. The description sets out what passengers said happened next. Wounded, the captain managed to open the cockpit door so they could come in, confront the attacker and steady the plane. The Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia has said he remains in a stable condition.
The comments came in even faster than the views. Before the clip had been up half a day, it had about ten times the comments of a usual first day for an ITV News short. Some viewers wish the captain a quick recovery. Many others question the account itself, or ask why so little has been made public about the person behind the attack.
It was a heavy news day for the channel. Two other uploads from the same day also ran well ahead of usual. One reported how Americans reacted after Christa Pike, on death row in Tennessee, survived two lethal injections. The other showed the first wave of around 700 prisoners leaving jail early in England and Wales under Prime Minister Andy Burnham's expanded release scheme. As we reported here, footballers reacting to the Manchester City verdict led the channel the day before, ahead of its coverage of the flight. This time the cockpit attack comes first.
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- Channel
- ITV News
- Subscribers
- 2,250,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,318,533 (on a normal day: 1,369,969)
- Video published
- October 1, 2026
- Video views so far
- 130,573 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 223,070
The numbers
The figures below show how far the captain's story ran ahead of a usual first day for an ITV News short.
