Flydubai co-pilot initially planned attack for July, investigators say | Flydubai plane incident

Investigators believe the co-pilot who attempted to take control of a plane from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week had initially planned his attack for July but postponed the hijacking, possibly because a friend was among the crew, regional and Israeli officials said.

Evidence of pre-planning suggests that Hamam al-Hammami, 29, may have specifically sought employment with an airline that flew to Israel to carry out the attack on flydubai flight FZ1073 last Wednesday, experts believe.

Police and security agencies in at least six countries are working to piece together the background of Hammami, an Omani national, and his intentions, as well as establishing whether he acted entirely alone.

Hammami allegedly used a spare ax kept in the cockpit to launch a surprise attack on the pilot approximately two hours and 20 minutes after takeoff. The plane was carrying more than 180 passengers – almost all Israelis – and crew members on a routine flight.

Israeli media cited Hammami’s statements to interrogators since his transfer to the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to report that he planned to crash into Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, or perhaps another high-profile target nearby.

The flight’s captain, Smit Machchhar, said Saturday that shortly after Hammami left his seat to pray, he felt a “big blow” to the back of his head.

In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, Machchhar said: “The shots kept falling…That’s when I realized it wasn’t the plane, it was the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.” »

Despite his injuries, Machchhar managed to unlock the cockpit safety door to allow the passengers to restrain Hammami. A Flydubai reserve pilot traveling on the flight took control of the plane and landed it at a regional airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where the co-pilot was arrested by Saudi authorities.

The investigation into Hammami has now spread to more than eight countries. Authorities in New Zealand and Australia are looking into reports that the co-pilot studied in both countries about 10 years ago.

Hammami, who has an Omani father and a Syrian mother, was reportedly employed by Oman Air from 2018 to June 2025, but left the airline after being transferred to a desk role amid concerns he had developed extremist views. He was later hired by Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan national airline, but did not obtain permission to fly and abandoned his job there.

Shortly after, Hammami was hired by state-owned flydubai, which was in need of pilots due to its rapid expansion. The airline checked criminal records, but not evidence of radicalization, officials said.

A key question for investigators is when Hammami began formulating his plan to attack a plane full of Israelis or target Israel.

Netanyahu claimed Hammami had undergone “radical Islamist indoctrination” and was clearly suicidal, without providing details.

Nine hours after the attack, a message was posted on an online social media account in Hammami’s name praising Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former al-Qaeda leader, as well as a militant responsible for a deadly suicide attack against U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2009. A second message contained religious imagery.

An analysis of Hammami’s X account by a company that uses AI to measure the toxicity of individual social media accounts revealed dozens of misogynistic posts, including public threats against women. Analysis by Accountability! — which recovered Hammami’s deleted account by scraping internet archives and examining nearly 3,000 messages and replies — discovered repeated use of slurs against women and a “consistent pattern” of use of terms meaning “whores” and “dirty feminist.” Researchers also found homophobic slurs directed at men.

“Beyond the offensive language, the analysis revealed explicit conditional threats of physical violence… including repeated images of stomping on a woman’s head and making it ‘a lesson to others,’” the analysis said.

“Online toxicity is not only corrosive, it’s a warning sign. This pilot was telling the world who he was in his messages. If an official had listened to him, nearly 200 people may never have been put in danger,” said Gur Megiddo, co-founder and CEO of Accountability!.

Regional officials said Emirati authorities shared information about the passengers and crew, including their nationalities, with Israel.

The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, said the Transportation Ministry was responsible for checking passenger lists on foreign flights, but Transportation Minister Miri Regev said on X that security agencies handled flight safety.

Israeli newspapers reported that a key database on foreign pilots had not been verified despite concerns raised by official reports.

The attack came at a sensitive time for Israel, a week before the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that sparked the Gaza war, and weeks before a hotly contested general election in which security – and responsibility for the failure to keep Israelis safe – has been a central issue.

Opposition politicians took advantage of these apparent errors to attack Netanyahu, who has boasted about his ability to keep Israelis safe.

“This is exactly what the collapse of the system looks like,” Yair Golan, head of the opposition Democratic Party, wrote on X. “A Transport Minister who completely abandons our skies and a Prime Minister who abandons national security.”