DELHI-As an aviator, Smit Machchhar had piloted through an in-flight birth, turbulent monsoon skies and a landing in high winds in Greece that stretched his skills to the limit.

On Wednesday, the 38-year-old Indian pilot faced a midair incident of a completely different sort: a violent stabbing attack from within the cockpit.

Capt. Machchhar fought off his attacker while in charge of a FlyDubai Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane to Tel Aviv, apparently managing to alert air-traffic control, open the cockpit door and allow passengers and crew to rescue the plane from a petrifying plunge.

His heroism was hailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who praised his patience, acumen and courage.

Machchhar suffered from severe wounds to his neck and hands, according to a dentist who treated the pilot on board Flight 1073 after restraining the attacker. "The cockpit was full of blood," said Shota Musaev on Israeli Army Radio on Thursday.

The captain's left hand had almost split in half as a result of stab wounds, Musaev said.

When Machchhar's pulse began to drop and he started to lose consciousness, Musaev called for the reserve pilots-who had by then taken charge of the plane-to land as soon as possible. "I don't think he would have survived all the way to Israel," he said.

Machchhar is receiving treatment for his wounds in Saudi Arabia, where his plane made an emergency landing, according to Indian lawmaker Parag Shah, who said he had spoken to the pilot's family. The family is on their way to meet him, Shah said.

Those who have worked with Machchhar, who lives with his wife and two children in Dubai, and others who know his family in Mumbai, describe him as very sober and grounded.

During almost two decades as a pilot, he has landed in some of the world's highest and most challenging airports, mentored at an aviation academy in India to help give others a leg up into the airline industry and dealt with a number of in-flight medical emergencies.

On one flight, shortly after takeoff, the cabin crew reported to the flight deck that a passenger had gone into labor. Machchhar recalled on a podcast last year preparing to divert the plane for landing.

"We checked out the nearest airfields, the weather for all the airfields, we saw what is operationally feasible, we had six-seven minutes," he said. "And suddenly in [the] next couple of minutes we got a call, 'We've got a baby on board.'"

Becoming an aviator was never Machchhar's childhood dream, he told the Indian podcast. He had expected to join the family textile business and pursued a course in textile engineering and another in management. But a seminar on aviation during that time gave him the bug for flying around the age of 19, just as India was developing what has become a booming industry for internal flights.

He hadn't even been in a plane that many times before deciding to become a pilot, he told the podcast. His first commercial flight in the cockpit was from Bengaluru to Delhi. "That was scary. Not because of the flying part, but the responsibility," he said.

He started his career at SpiceJet, said Captain Gurucharan Arora, former director of flight operations at the low-cost Indian carrier, who remembers supervising him on a simulator.

"The first time I met him, I asked him 'Why did your parents name you the smiling mosquito?'" said Arora. "He looked confused. I explained, Smit means smiling, and Machchhar means mosquito. He laughed very hard."

While flying he tends to avoid deep or controversial topics with his co-pilot, since the primary duty of a pilot is to monitor, Machchhar told the podcast.

Captain Teena Goswami, who worked with Machchhar at SpiceJet, first met him in 2019 and remembered him as a calm, humble captain who treated junior pilots with respect.

Pilots are trained to handle pressure, she said, but in an extreme situation people can freeze or surrender. Machchhar, despite being attacked and dealing with an aircraft that was losing altitude, had the presence of mind to open the cockpit door, make an announcement over the public-address system and call for help, she said.

"What he did was, I think, that saved everything," Goswami said. She described him as "very cool headed, very calm" and said colleagues generally looked forward to flying with him.

Since the start of his career, Machchhar had always wanted to pilot Boeing planes, he told the podcast. "My first aircraft was a Boeing, and it's always been that aircraft all my life." He trained on the aircraft maker's MAX jets.

When two MAX jets suffered fatal crashes within months of each other in 2018 and 2019, his enthusiasm dimmed.

"That's when panic started. We were not scared but we were not sure what was going on at that point," Machchhar told the podcast. But fixes made by Boeing to the jet reassured him of the safety of the aircraft, which he has flown since they went back into service right up until Wednesday's fateful flight.

As he lay bleeding in the MAX 8's galley, Machchhar spoke about his children and asked the dentist by his side if he could save him.

"He wanted to live, he didn't want to die," recalled Musaev. The captain then asked him to send a message to his children if he didn't make it.

"And I told him 'God is with you, pray. Everything will be OK. We are with you.'"