Hijacking Terrorist Had An Earlier Plan — And A Chilling Endgame

The Omani terrorist pilot accused of stabbing the captain and attempting to hijack a Flydubai jet carrying 174 people, including four Americans, had previously planned a hijacking attack months earlier but called it off because he was friends with at least one crew member.

Hamam al-Hammami planned to crash Flight 1073 into the heart of Israel, telling investigators he intended to fly normally after killing the captain, obtain landing clearance, and then crash the aircraft into a building at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, according to The Times of Israel. He reportedly wanted to wait until the last moment to prevent authorities from detecting and stopping the attack.

That’s why al-Hammami waited until the aircraft was over Jordan before attacking the cockpit, the outlet reported.

Flight 1073 was carrying 174 people, including 27 children, from Dubai to Tel Aviv when the Omani co-pilot attacked Captain Smit Machchhar. The aircraft plunged thousands of feet as passengers fought their way into the cockpit and subdued the attacker. One passenger helped stabilize the plane before two off-duty pilots took over the controls, The Daily Wire reported.

President Donald Trump described the co-pilot as a terrorist “whack job.” He praised the captain for opening the cockpit door and allowing passengers to intervene.

“He had the sense to — amazing. In a way, he was a hero — to open the door,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “You know, those doors are solid steel; you can’t get them open from outside.”

The Omani national had visited Ben Gurion Airport several times in recent months while flying for Flydubai, The Times of Israel reported. He told investigators that during a June visit, he gathered on-the-ground intelligence to plot the violent hijacking.

In July, he planned to carry out the hijacking attack but called it off at the last moment because he was friends with at least one of the crew members, according to the outlet.

Al-Hammami was born in the United Arab Emirates to an Omani father and a Syrian mother and spent several years there, CNN reported. The outlet reviewed a LinkedIn profile bearing Al-Hammami’s name that said he worked for Oman Air for seven years before leaving in February 2025. He joined Royal Air Maroc in June 2025 and left in January 2026. The profile made no mention of Flydubai and has since been deleted.

According to the social media account, he also studied aviation management at Buckinghamshire New University in England, and the university confirmed to CNN that a man by that name completed a three-year distance-learning course. He graduated in 2023.

CNN also reviewed a since-deleted X account that portrayed al-Hammami as “deeply religious and misogynistic.” In one post from February 2022, he reportedly complained that women had rejected marriage proposals because they were unwilling to wear the niqab or forfeit their jobs.

Al-Hammami had previously been removed from flight duties at Oman Air over concerns about his radical ideological views, The Wall Street Journal reported. Despite that, Flydubai hired him anyway, allowing the hijacker to operate the UAE-Israel route.

Aviation-security analysts told the outlet that the incident exposed potential security failures. Even if a screening lapse allowed a weapon through, they said, a determined attacker should have been identified and stopped before reaching the airport.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described al-Hammami as having undergone Islamist radicalization.

“As time passes, the picture is becoming clearer,” Netanyahu said, according to foreign media. “Yaniv and his heroic friends prevented a disaster on the scale of September 11. The attacker underwent Islamist radicalization. He came to crash the plane with its passengers on board. We are now investigating whether he was sent, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.”

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