Topline
The alleged hijacker in a dramatic Flydubai flight incident that ended in one pilot being stabbed by another was reportedly intending to crash the plane into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport before he was stopped by passengers and airline staff, ABC News reported Monday.
A flydubai Boeing 737 MAX 8 on Sept. 30, 2026.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Facts
Hamam al-Hammami, the co-pilot on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, is accused of attacking the plane’s pilot with the aircraft’s crash axe and trying to hijack the plane, causing a dramatic loss in altitude and ending in the plane being diverted to Saudi Arabia.
ABC News cited two unnamed senior U.S. officials and an unnamed Israeli source familiar with the investigation in reporting al-Hammami’s intentions, which were also reported by the Times of Israel.
The Times of Israel reported al-Hammami told Saudi and Emirati investigators he spent his trips to the Tel Aviv airport while working for Flydubai to collect intelligence and plan his attack, and one local news station claimed he admitted to specifically seeking a job with the airline to carry out his plot.
United Arab Emirates’ attorney-general has called al-Hammami’s alleged hijacking a “terrorist act” and reporting has discovered he’d been previously found in possession of extremist materials and posted disturbing images and videos to his LinkedIn profile.
Key background
Flydubai flight FZ1073 left from Dubai International Airport at around 7:05 a.m. on Sept. 30, bound for Tel Aviv with 174 passengers and six crew members aboard. About two hours into the flight, al-Hammami is accused of suddenly attacking the pilot using a cockpit crash axe. The plane was forced into a sharp dive and plummeted from 33,000 feet to roughly 15,000 feet in two minutes. Passengers described the moment as a “horror movie,” with families holding hands and fearing for their lives. Despite his injuries, the pilot fought to open the cockpit door from the inside and made the rest of the plane aware of the threat. Passengers and crew members rushed the cockpit, wrestled al-Hammami from the controls and restrained him. Off-duty pilots then stepped in and landed the plane in Saudi Arabia. Because “almost all” of the plane’s passengers were Israeli and the plane was transmitting an unlawful interference signal, Israel scrambled military aircraft in response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“We didn’t know if the pilot was with us or not, we didn’t know who was against whom. We even started suspecting the flight attendants,” Asaf Rajuan, a passenger on flight FZ1073, said of the experience. “Underneath us was only desert. We were afraid we were being taken to a hostile country.”
WHO IS HAMAM AL-HAMMAMI?
Al-Hammami, 29, is an Omani national born in the United Arab Emirates. Multiple sources report he had been flagged as a security risk and was suspended as a trainee copilot at Oman Air in 2024 for possessing extremist materials, and Netanyahu said he is believed to have undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination” earlier in his life. Images of al-Qaeda figures were found posted on his social media accounts, including AI-generated images. Israeli outlets have reported he was in possession of anti-Israeli literature.
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