{"id":637435,"date":"2026-10-05T21:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/637435\/"},"modified":"2026-10-05T21:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T21:50:10","slug":"flydubai-co-pilot-originally-planned-attack-for-july-investigators-believe-flydubai-plane-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/637435\/","title":{"rendered":"Flydubai co-pilot originally planned attack for July, investigators believe | Flydubai plane incident"},"content":{"rendered":"

Investigators believe the co-pilot who tried to take control of a plane from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week originally planned his attack for July but postponed the hijacking, possibly because a friend was among the crew, regional and Israeli officials have said.<\/p>\n

The evidence of prior planning suggests that Hamam al-Hammami, 29, may have specifically sought employment with an airline that flew to Israel in order to carry out the attack on last Wednesday\u2019s flydubai \u200cflight FZ1073, experts believe.<\/p>\n

Police and security agencies in at least six countries are scrambling to piece together <\/a>the background of Hammami, an Omani national, and his intentions, as well as to establish if he acted entirely alone.<\/p>\n

Hammami allegedly used an emergency crash axe<\/a> 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 \u2013 almost all Israeli \u2013 and crew on a routine flight.<\/p>\n

\"HowHow the stabbing incident unfolded on Israel-bound flydubai plane | Deconstructed<\/p>\n

Israeli media have <\/a>quoted from Hammami\u2019s statements to interrogators since being transferred to United Arab Emirates custody on Thursday to report that he planned to crash into Ben Gurion airport near \u2060Tel Aviv, or possibly another high-profile target nearby.<\/p>\n

The flight\u2019s captain, Smit Machchhar<\/a>, said on Saturday that shortly after Hammami had left his seat to pray, he felt a \u201cbig blow\u201d to the back of his head.<\/p>\n

In a phone call with Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Saturday, Machchhar said: \u201cThe blows kept coming \u2026 That\u2019s when I realised that it\u2019s not the aircraft, it\u2019s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his injuries Machchhar was able to unlock the cockpit\u2019s security door to allow passengers to overpower Hammami. A reserve flydubai pilot travelling on the flight took control of the aircraft and landed it at a regional airport in north-western Saudi Arabia<\/a>, where the co-pilot was detained by Saudi authorities.<\/p>\n

Capt Smit Machchhar was visited on Sunday in hospital in the UAE by Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai. Photograph: Hamdan bin Mohammed\/X\/Reuters<\/p>\n

The investigation into Hammami has now spread to more than eight countries. Authorities in New Zealand and Australia are examining reports that the co-pilot studied in both<\/a> nations about 10 years ago.<\/p>\n

Hammami, who has an Omani father and a Syrian mother, is thought to have been employed by Oman Air from 2018 to June 2025, but left the airline<\/a> after being moved to a desk job out of concerns that he had developed extremist views. He was then hired by Royal Air Maroc, the Moroccan national flag carrier, but did not obtain permission to fly and gave up his job there.<\/p>\n

Shortly afterward, Hammami was hired at the state-owned flydubai, which has needed pilots as it expands rapidly. The airline conducted checks for a criminal record but not for evidence of radicalisation, officials have said.<\/p>\n

A key question for investigators is when Hammami began to formulate his plan to attack a plane full of Israelis or target Israel.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu has claimed<\/a> Hammami had undergone \u201cradical Islamist indoctrination\u201d and was clearly suicidal, without giving details.<\/p>\n

FlyDubai conducted checks on Hammami for a criminal record but not for evidence of radicalisation, officials have said. Photograph: Fadel Senna\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Nine hours after the attack, a post was made to an online social media account in Hammami\u2019s name praising Ayman al-Zawahiri, a former al-Qaida leader, as well as a militant responsible for a lethal suicide attack on US troops in Afghanistan in 2009. A second post contained religious imagery.<\/p>\n

An analysis of Hammami\u2019s X account by a company that uses AI to measure the toxicity of individuals\u2019 social media accounts found dozens of misogynistic posts, including public threats against women. The analysis by Accountability! \u2013 which recovered Hammami\u2019s deleted account by scraping internet archives, and reviewed almost 3,000 posts and responses \u2013 found repeated use of slurs against women, and a \u201cconsistent pattern\u201d of use of terms meaning \u201cwhores\u201d, and \u201cfilthy feminist\u201d. The researchers also found homophobic slurs directed at men.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond offensive language, the analysis surfaced explicit conditional threats of physical violence \u2026 including repeated imagery of stomping on a woman\u2019s head and making her \u2018a lesson for others\u2019,\u201d the analysis found.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnline toxicity isn\u2019t just corrosive, it\u2019s a warning sign. This pilot was telling the world who he was in his posts. Had anyone in charge been listening, nearly 200 people might never have been put in danger,\u201d said Gur Megiddo, a co-founder and chief executive of Accountability!.<\/p>\n

Regional officials said Emirati authorities had shared information about the passengers and crew, including their nationalities, with Israel.<\/p>\n

The Shin Bet, Israel\u2019s domestic security agency, said the transportation ministry was responsible for vetting passenger lists from foreign flights but the transportation minister, Miri Regev, said on X that the security agencies handled flight security.<\/p>\n

Israeli newspapers reported that a key database of foreign pilots had not been checked despite concerns raised by official reports.<\/p>\n

The attack occurred at a sensitive time for Israel, a week before the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023 which triggered the war in Gaza, and weeks before a fiercely contested general election in which security \u2013 and responsibility for failures to keep Israelis safe \u2013 has been a central issue.<\/p>\n

Opposition politicians have seized on the apparent lapses to attack Netanyahu, who has boasted of his ability to keep Israelis safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is exactly what system collapse looks like,\u201d Yair Golan, the head of the opposition Democrats party, wrote on X. \u201cA transportation minister who completely abandons our skies, and a prime minister who abandons national security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Investigators believe the co-pilot who tried to take control of a plane from Dubai to Tel Aviv last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637436,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-637435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}