New Delhi: The flydubai co-pilot Hamam-al-Hammami, who has been arrested for trying to crash the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight, reportedly planned the attack in July. He, however, abandoned the plan at the last moment because one of the crew members was his friend, sources told Israel’s Channel 12.
The Omani national then intended to carry out his plan on 30 September. According to UAE interrogators, al-Hammami confessed that his core objective was to neutralise the captain, Smit Machchhar, maintain a seemingly normal flight profile to secure landing clearances from air traffic control, and then deliberately crash the passenger plane directly into a jet or a building at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport.
Hammami told the interrogators that if the airport plan failed, then he would have diverted the aircraft to a nearby skyscraper at the very last second, similar to a 9/11 attack.
‘Planned attack before I was accepted’
According to reports, the Omani co-pilot formulated the attack strategy before being hired by flydubai. Hammami admitted during interrogations that his entire career move to the UAE was orchestrated around his plot. He confessed that he actively researched which specific airlines held active routes into Israel.
He also visited Ben Gurion Airport several times in the months leading up to the attack. As a pilot, he told investigators that he used his regular rostered flights to Tel Aviv to conduct surveillance and gather critical information.
He highlighted a specific trip in June this year, during which he confessed to focusing his absolute and entire focus on studying airport operations, mapping out terminal layouts, and planning the exact trajectory for his planned suicide crash.
“I looked into which airline flies to Tel Aviv. That’s why I chose Flydubai. I planned it even before I was accepted,” he told investigators.
Also read: Top 3 questions global aviation experts are asking about the flydubai cockpit incident
Major security lapses
According to reports, the investigation has exposed an interconnected chain of major security lapses across multiple jurisdictions:
The internal Omani grounding and cover-up
In 2024, Omani authorities scrutinised Hammami’s digital habits, discovering he was actively consuming extremist materials and tracking radical websites.
Deeming him a severe security threat, Oman Air stripped him of his flight training and pilot duties. However, instead of terminating or reporting him internationally, Omani authorities placed him in a deradicalisation programme and reassigned him to an administrative desk job within the airline.
Flydubai’s vetting omissions
When Hammami applied to flydubai in early 2026, the low-cost carrier performed a standard background check for criminal records. The airline’s hiring team completely failed to cross-reference or contact his former employer (Oman Air) or the Omani aviation authority to vet his prior employment and grounding history.
The diplomatic loophole
Israeli aviation regulations strictly prohibit pilots who hold citizenship from countries without formal diplomatic relations with Israel (such as Oman) from operating flights into its national airspace.
A massive intelligence mismatch between Israel’s Ministry of Transport and its domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, allowed al-Hammami’s name on the pre-flight manifest to pass completely unflagged, despite multiple rostered flights on the Tel Aviv route in the preceding months.
Also read: Flydubai sudden descent—What happens to your body when a plane drops 14,000 feet?
What happened on the flydubai flight?
On 30 September, a major disaster was narrowly averted on flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv when Hammami launched a mid-flight ‘terrorist attack’ inside the cockpit. Citing a prayer break, he suddenly attacked Machchhar, using the cockpit’s emergency crash axe.
Hammami then took control and forced the plane into a violent, rapid dive, causing the aircraft to plummet between 14,000 and 17,000 feet in less than a minute. Machchhar, who was severely wounded, managed one “last push” to unlock the cockpit door from the inside.
Hearing the chaos and realising the plane was going down, several passengers, including an Israeli plumber who pulled back on the flight controls to stabilise the jet and two off-duty reserve pilots, rushed to the cockpit. They overpowered the attacker, took control of the flight and diverted the plane to Tabuk Airport, Saudi Arabia.
Hammami was taken into custody upon reaching Tabuk Airport and was transferred to the UAE the next day.
Meanwhile, following the emergency landing, Machchhar was rushed to a local hospital in Tabuk, where he underwent emergency surgery for severe injuries sustained during the axe attack. On 1 October, he was transported under the escort of a UAE security team to a high-security medical facility in Abu Dhabi for continued recovery.