flydubai's co-pilot just confessed to a months-long plot against Israel
1 hour ago · 5 October 2026Share
A FlyDubai Boeing 737 aircraft at Dubai International Airport. File photo. Aeroprints · CC BY-SA 3.0
An Omani co-pilot tried to crash a flydubai passenger jet into Ben Gurion Airport or a Tel Aviv skyscraper.
And now his interrogation shows he'd been planning it for months, not minutes.
Here's what happened five days ago. Hamam al-Hammami, 29, attacked his captain with a crash axe mid-flight. The plane was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
The captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, got hurt but still managed to open the cockpit door. Passengers and crew rushed in and subdued al-Hammami.
Before that, al-Hammami had switched off the autopilot and pushed the controls forward. The plane dropped about 17,000 feet in roughly 30 seconds. It landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Reports differ on how many passengers were on board. Some say 182. Some say 174. That hasn't been sorted out yet.
Two days ago, the UAE's top prosecutor, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, said al-Hammami had attempted to carry out a terrorist act.
Now, under interrogation in the UAE, al-Hammami has confessed to a lot more than one violent moment in the air.
Investigators say he planned to fly the plane into Ben Gurion Airport, or into a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, before Israeli fighter jets could stop him.
And here's the part that changes everything. He started planning this before flydubai even hired him, back in February. He deliberately applied to airlines that fly to Tel Aviv, just to get the access he needed.
So this wasn't a pilot who snapped. This was a plan built around landing one specific job.
He kept working the plan after he got hired, too. He flew into Ben Gurion Airport several times on normal flydubai rotations. Investigators say that in June, he spent an entire stay there doing nothing but watching people and tracking their movements.
He'd originally planned to attack in July. But he waited, investigators say, because a friend of his was going to be on the crew. He didn't want to hurt that person. So he waited until September, once that friend was no longer involved.
That's not an impulse. That's someone making a calculated decision to wait.
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An aerial view of Ben-Gurion International Airport. File photo. McKaby · CC BY-SA 4.0
Al-Hammami told interrogators he was "not afraid of death."
And there were warning signs long before any of this. Back in 2024, Oman Air pulled him out of flight training over concerns about his views and gave him a ground job instead. In 2025, he did three months of theoretical training with Royal Air Maroc, but they didn't hire him. Months later, flydubai did.
So the real question now is how he got through flydubai's screening at all.
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says al-Hammami underwent what he called Islamist indoctrination. President Donald Trump told CBS News the co-pilot might have Iran connections, saying "based on what I'm hearing." Neither has shown any evidence for that.
And investigators themselves don't agree on what kind of operation this was.
Israeli intelligence assessments given to CBS News say it was probably a lone-wolf attack, done without help. But people close to the investigation told the Israeli outlet Israel Hayom that investigators think he needed outside logistical support. They're now looking into a possible link to a Syrian group that Iran set up during the Assad era — a group that may still be active.
Iran has rejected that completely. Its foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, called any claim of Iranian involvement a false flag built on fabricated evidence.
Here's some background that matters. Al-Hammami's mother is Syrian, and he spent time there growing up. Investigators are now looking at that period as a possible point of radicalisation.
He also studied in Australia for about two years. Australia's Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team is now investigating his ties there. Separately, he studied aviation management by distance learning at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK. The university says he never trained as a pilot there.
Investigators have also found deleted social media accounts. They contained misogynistic content and material that endorsed violence against women.
Right now, authorities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Australia are all investigating whether al-Hammami acted alone or had help.
A senior Emirati source says he faces the death penalty if convicted, and that Abu Dhabi wants the harshest sentence available.
So what don't we know? Whether anyone helped him. And whether the Iran connection is real, or invented.
Four countries are now trying to answer those two questions.
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