By Dr. Aninda Sidhana
Psychiatrist | Psychosexual Medicine Specialist | Trauma-Informed Mental Health Advocate
Dr. Aninda Sidhana examines psychological recovery after aviation emergencies, using Flight FZ1073 to explore delayed distress, resilience, and the burdens placed on rescuers. The article considers faith, practical support, and individual recovery timelines, arguing that surviving danger should be followed by compassionate care that respects each person’s needs and choices.
The aircraft landed safely.
Those four words usually close the story. They tell us the immediate danger has passed. The engines have stopped. The doors have opened. Families can be called. Passengers can finally put their feet on solid ground.
But there is another landing we speak about far less. The landing of the human nervous system.
On September 30, flydubai Flight FZ1073 was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv when an extraordinary crisis unfolded in the cockpit. Captain Smit Machchhar was seriously injured during an attack by the co-pilot. The aircraft entered a terrifying rapid descent. Despite his injuries, Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, enabling others aboard to intervene. Passengers and crew helped bring the situation under control, while qualified pilots aboard helped regain control of the aircraft before it landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
On October 3, the UAE Prosecutor-General said the co-pilot had attempted to carry out a terrorist attack. The investigation is continuing into the circumstances, motive, prior planning and whether the suspect acted independently or under direction.
Those questions matter enormously. Aviation will investigate the cockpit. It will investigate security. It will investigate vetting, procedures, access and every crucial second during which catastrophe was narrowly avoided.
But as a psychiatrist, another question stays with me. What happens after everyone survives?
Because an aircraft can stop falling long before the human body stops believing that it is falling.
When the body knows before the mind does
Imagine sitting inside an aircraft at cruising altitude. Perhaps you are reading. Perhaps your child is asleep beside you. Perhaps you are thinking about the work waiting at your destination.
And suddenly the aircraft falls.
You do not know what is happening in the cockpit. You do not have the information investigators will later reconstruct. But your body does not wait for an explanation.
The heart accelerates. Breathing changes. Muscles tighten. Attention narrows. The brain begins scanning for danger.
Some people become extraordinarily focused. Some freeze. Some pray. Some reach for the person beside them. Some act.
These are not signs of weakness or courage. They are variations of the oldest human task we possess: Survive.
The problem is that survival biology does not always receive the message when the danger ends. The passenger may be standing safely inside an airport terminal. The nervous system may still be thousands of feet above the ground.
Not every survivor becomes a patient
This distinction matters. We should be careful not to convert every frightening experience into a psychiatric diagnosis. Human beings can be remarkably resilient.
After severe danger, many people may experience disturbed sleep, intrusive memories, heightened alertness, irritability, fear or emotional swings and gradually recover. Some will not.
Research involving survivors of aviation accidents and emergency landings has demonstrated something clinically important: there is no single trajectory after trauma.
Some people remain resilient. Some initially struggle and recover. Others develop persistent symptoms. For some, difficulties emerge later. And occasionally people who seemed to have recovered experience symptoms again.
That is why trauma-informed care should avoid two opposite mistakes. The first is saying: “You survived. You’re fine.” The second is saying: “You experienced something terrible. Therefore you must be traumatised.”
Neither respects the individual. The better question is: What do you need now — and will that answer be different next week or next month?
What happens to the hero?
Captain Machchhar has understandably been celebrated for his actions. Despite serious injury, he reportedly found enough strength and presence of mind to open the cockpit door, allowing others aboard to intervene. He later described drawing strength from reciting the Hanuman Chalisa during the crisis.
We know how to honour courage. I am less certain that we know how to care for courageous people afterwards.
Public language can quietly become a burden. Once somebody becomes “the hero,” vulnerability can feel almost prohibited.
Everyone wants to ask: How did you do it? What were you thinking? How did you save them? Where did you find that courage?
Perhaps somebody also needs to ask: How are you sleeping? What happens when the room becomes quiet? What does your body remember? Do you need somewhere where nobody expects you to be brave?
A pilot can be exceptionally competent and still be frightened. A rescuer can save another life and still need support. A doctor can function flawlessly during an emergency and cry afterwards.
Courage and psychological pain are not opposites. The ability to function during danger tells us very little about what a person may experience once the danger is gone.
Sometimes the shaking begins only after we are safe.
Faith is part of the psychology of survival
There is another part of Captain Machchhar’s account that deserves attention. Prayer. He has spoken about reciting the Hanuman Chalisa while fighting to survive.
There is a temptation when discussing mental health to divide experience into neat categories. Science over here. Faith over there. Human beings rarely live so tidily.
For millions of people, spirituality is part of the architecture through which fear, uncertainty and mortality are understood.
A familiar prayer can create continuity when everything else has become chaotic. It can restore a relationship with something larger than the immediate terror. It can evoke childhood, family, identity and belonging at a moment when control has disappeared.
For someone else, the anchor may not be religion. It may be the thought of a child. A spouse’s voice. Training. Professional duty. Breathing. A promise. A sentence repeated silently: I have to get home.
Trauma-informed care should not prescribe meaning. Nor should it dismiss the meaning a survivor already possesses.
One of the most respectful questions we can ask is: What helped you survive that moment? And then listen carefully to the answer.
The people who moved towards danger
There is another group in this story whose minds matter too. The people who intervened.
During emergencies, some human beings do something remarkable: while every survival instinct might reasonably tell them to move away from danger, they move towards it.
Passengers and crew helped bring the situation under control, and qualified pilots aboard stepped forward when the aircraft needed them.
From a distance, this looks like pure courage. From inside the nervous system, it can be much more complicated.
During extreme danger, there may simply be no time to process emotion. There is a problem. It needs solving. Someone needs help. Something must happen in the next few seconds. So the mind does what is necessary. Emotion waits.
Emergency physicians know this. Soldiers know this. Police officers know this. Disaster responders know this. Survivors know this.
A person can be astonishingly calm while everything is happening — and fall apart while making tea two days later.
That is not inconsistency. It may simply be the nervous system finally recognising that it is safe enough to feel.
What aviation understands better than almost any industry
Aviation is extraordinarily good at learning from danger. When something goes badly wrong, investigators do not simply say: “But everyone survived.”
They reconstruct what happened. They study systems. They examine human factors. They look at communication, procedure, technology, training and every decision that preceded the event.
The purpose is not only to understand yesterday. It is to protect tomorrow. There is something profoundly intelligent about that philosophy. And perhaps it can be extended.
We routinely ask whether an aircraft is safe to return to service. What would it mean to ask, with equal seriousness, whether the human beings inside that aircraft have been given what they need to return to life?
Not everyone needs therapy. Not everyone should be required to talk about what happened. In fact, the evidence gives us an important warning here.
Compulsory psychological debriefing — requiring people to revisit and emotionally recount a traumatic event simply because they experienced it — has not consistently been shown to prevent post-traumatic stress and should not be treated as universal care.
Support should not become another demand placed upon the survivor.
Instead, a psychologically informed post-emergency pathway can be much gentler. Safety. Accurate information. Practical assistance. Connection with family. Respect for culture and faith. Information about common reactions to severe stress. An easy route back to support if difficulties emerge. And targeted, evidence-based treatment for those who actually develop clinically significant symptoms.
The World Health Organization describes psychological first aid as humane, supportive and practical assistance to people affected by serious crisis events rather than as formal psychotherapy.
That distinction matters. Psychological care begins with humanity before it begins with diagnosis.
Trauma has more than one timetable
Research following aviation disasters offers another lesson. Some survivors report unmet psychological needs months — even years — after an event.
That means the question cannot simply be: “Were counsellors available at the airport?” The better question is: Was there still a door open later?
A passenger may feel fine for the first week. Then attempt to fly again. A crew member may return quickly to work and discover that the sound of an alarm suddenly feels different.
A child may not possess the vocabulary to explain why bedtime has become frightening. A family member who was not aboard the aircraft may develop intense anxiety every time the survivor travels.
Recovery does not operate according to an incident-response timetable. It has its own clock.
The cockpit door — and the doors inside us
There is one image from Flight FZ1073 that is difficult to forget. The cockpit door.
For decades, aviation has understandably treated that reinforced door as a critical defence against danger entering the cockpit. On this flight, survival depended in part on the wounded captain managing to open it.
There is something psychologically resonant about that image. Human beings build doors too.
We compartmentalise. We put fear away because something else must be done. We return to work. We reassure our children. We tell people: “I’m okay.”
Those doors are not necessarily unhealthy. Sometimes they are exactly what enables us to survive. But not every door needs to remain closed forever.
There may eventually come a moment when survival no longer requires silence. When strength can include vulnerability. When the person who saved everyone else can allow someone else to sit beside them.
Perhaps survival needs a second definition
We tend to define survival biologically. The heart is beating. The person came home. The aircraft landed.
That is, of course, the most essential definition. But perhaps it is not the complete one.
Survival is also the long process by which the human being begins trusting ordinary life again. Sleeping. Boarding another aircraft. Allowing a child out of sight. Hearing a loud noise without immediately preparing for catastrophe. Remembering without reliving. Carrying the story without having the story carry you.
The investigation into Flight FZ1073 will tell us more about what happened inside that cockpit. Those findings may change aviation.
But there is another investigation that will happen privately inside the people who were there. The mind asking the body: Are we safe now? The body answering: I’m not sure yet. And perhaps, gradually, both learning to believe the same thing.
The aircraft landed safely. For some aboard, another landing may take longer.
So after extraordinary acts of survival, perhaps we should ask one more question. Not only: How did you survive? But: How are you living after survival?
Because reaching the ground is an ending. And sometimes it is also where recovery begins.
Dr. Aninda Sidhana is a globally recognised psychiatrist with over 15 years of clinical and academic experience, trained at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) — one of India’s apex neuropsychiatry centres. She holds dual experience across general hospital psychiatry and tertiary care, and serves as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry in Rajasthan. She founded The Dignity Dialogues to transform “scar stories” into narrative capital through cinematic storytelling and listening circles. As a UN SDG Goodwill Ambassador focused on SDG 5, she does not merely treat mental health — she reshapes the culture around it.
