India, Oct. 5 -- When the news came that an Indian captain had been stabbed in the cockpit of a flydubai Boeing 737 and had still managed to open the door so others could reach him, I did not read it as another aviation headline. I read it as a captain's report from the only place where a pilot is finally judged: alone, injured, and responsible for everyone behind the door. I was commander of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 when it was hijacked (Kandahar) in December 1999.

For seven days we lived inside an aircraft that had ceased to be ours, first in Amritsar, then Lahore, Dubai and finally Kandahar. What stayed with me was not the drama that later filled books and screens. It was the narrower duty: keep the aircraft intact, keep the peop...