Incredible new details emerge on what happened in the cockpit of the Flydubai flight in this conversation between Captain Smit Machchar and the Israeli PM - this is my transcription:
"It was a normal flight and the co-pilot wanted to pray ... which a lot of locals do pray ... which is not out of the ordinary. While he was praying, out of respect, I was looking at the front and not at the back and suddenly, after about four-five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head. My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft, that something is not right ... but after that the blows kept coming, one after the other and that's when I realise that it's not the aircraft, it's the other guy who is in the cockpit with me. I did try and stop him but because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing and I was completely blurred out. And at that point, the next feeling I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down. My memory is still in bits and pieces right now but this is what I remember out of that time and I did try and manage to open the door once but I think he shut it back - closed. And at this point, I remember, I was lying down in the cockpit floor and I felt the aircraft and the whooshing sound and people screaming and as I was telling the Ambassador here, I had that one last fight left in me and .. you know ... call it personal or call it for people, I did it because if I don't do it I am going to die and that's when I pushed against everything .. I gave everything that I had and went for the door and opened the door and thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back ... took over control and the rest is what you know, Sir."