The FlyDubai first officer who allegedly tried to bring down Flight 1073 to Tel Aviv told investigators he had sought out airlines and routes that would take him to Israel and had almost carried out an attack this past summer before reconsidering, people briefed on the investigation into the incident said.
Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national living in Dubai, joined the budget United Arab Emirates airline in February. He had been barred from flying at previous employer Oman Air over concerns that he harbored extremist ideology and also was turned down for a job at Moroccan flagship Royal Air Maroc, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
He then looked to join an airline that would fly to Israel and sought to be put on FlyDubai's route between Dubai and Tel Aviv, the people briefed on the investigation said. Investigators also have access to Hammami's electronic devices, the people said.
Hammami sought to carry out a plan to incapacitate the captain and crash the plane into a target like Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and was prepared to carry out his plan on a previous flight on the route in July, the people said.
Some of the people said he held back because he cared about one of the crew members on the flight. They also said that Hammami told investigators that he was motivated to commit the attack due to the situation in Gaza.
Wednesday marks the third year since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack led by Hamas that left some 1,200 dead in Israel, took around 250 hostages and set off a war in Gaza. Palestinian health authorities say that conflict has killed more than 74,000 in the Palestinian enclave, without saying how many were combatants.
The early days of celebration in Israel over the heroism of the passengers has since shifted to concern about security holes that allowed Hammami to be in the cockpit and almost crash the plane.
The details about Hammami indicate that he had a sustained focus on Israel and had engaged in a degree of long-term planning ahead of the attack last week. They also add to the set of clues that authorities missed that could have prevented him from flying and working on such a sensitive route.
The Guardian previously reported Hammami's plan to carry out the attack in July.
The first officer repeatedly struck his captain with an onboard emergency ax and sent the plane into a dive that almost tore it apart before a group of passengers and crew took back control of the jet, say U.A.E and Israeli authorities, as well as passengers.
Omani authorities stopped Hammami from flying, placed him in a deradicalization program, and gave him a desk job after scrutinizing his online habits and determining that he showed too much interest in radical ideology. But they didn't flag their concerns more broadly. The Journal has reported that FlyDubai didn't vet Hammami with Oman and only did a criminal background check before hiring him.
FlyDubai on Wednesday declined to discuss the matter while the investigation continues.
Israel received a rundown of passengers and crew on the flight from FlyDubai in advance but didn't strike Hammami from the list. Israel bars pilots from countries with which it doesn't have diplomatic relations, like Oman, which should have disqualified him from working the route.
The country's Ministry of Transportation, which is responsible for securing flights to Israel by foreign carriers, has said it doesn't vet those lists because it doesn't think it is responsible for clearing passengers and crew and didn't realize it could access Israel's database of that information, the Journal has reported.
More than 1,200 crew members from banned countries including Syria, Lebanon and Oman have flown into Israel since the start of the year, a person familiar with the matter said.