The captain of a flydubai flight who was attacked by a co-pilot who intended to crash the plane has described blocking axe blows to the head and screaming for help as he reached for a knob to open the cockpit door.

Captain Smit Machchhar has been hailed as a hero for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last month, helping to thwart what the UAE attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who intended to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport.

Speaking in an interview with The National newspaper from a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi, his head and left arm bandaged, Machchhar said that when the first blow landed, he thought something had gone “horribly wrong (with) the aircraft structure”, before quickly realising he was being attacked and things had “taken a drastic turn”.

“The next thought was I need to get help in here,” he said in the interview published on Saturday.

“My immediate action was to free myself from the seat belts and I tried to just block the blows as much as I could,” he said, pointing to his arm that was wounded as he defended himself. “The blows were coming on the head.

“Immediately my hand went to the knob which opens the door and screaming for my colleagues, screaming his name.

“I believe that was the first time when I lost my consciousness.”

The aircraft, flight FZ1073, was in Saudi airspace when the co-pilot attacked Machchhar with a crash axe, typically kept in the cockpit for emergency use.

The incident caused the airliner to plunge 16,000 feet (4,900 metres) in 30 seconds before the attacker was overwhelmed and two other pilots who were on board landed the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia. The suspect, an Omani national, was transferred to the UAE, flydubai’s home country.

The plan was inspired by the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the US, UAE public prosecutors say, as a result of their criminal investigation launched on October 1.

Machchhar said he heard the cockpit door opening and screaming “between my colleague and the guy”.

He said the scariest thing he felt was the aircraft nose “steeply going down”.

“I was not very sure that I’ll make it out alive from this. Did I give up? No.”