Crash axe in the cockpit: UAE calls flydubai FZ1073 incident an attempted terrorist attack

Dubai: The United Arab Emirates on Saturday described the mid-air attack aboard flydubai flight FZ1073 as an attempted terrorist attack, identifying the suspect as a 29-year-old Omani national previously barred from flying by his own country's airline over extremist-view concerns. Prosecutor General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said, per the state news agency WAM, that co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami attacked Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, with the cockpit's crash axe and attempted to take control of the aircraft during Wednesday's flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. What followed was a struggle that nearly ended in catastrophe. The aircraft plunged more than 14,000 feet in about 30 seconds. Machchhar, seriously injured, managed to unlock the cockpit door, allowing passengers to rush forward and intervene. An Israeli plumber, Yaniv Hayoun, put al-Hammami in a headlock and pulled him from the captain's chair, and two off-duty flydubai pilots on the aircraft stabilised the Boeing 737 and landed it at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia. The 182 people on board — 166 of them Israelis — survived. Al-Hammami was detained by Saudi authorities and has since been transferred to the UAE, which is leading the investigation with Israeli participation. Investigators are working to establish whether al-Hammami acted as a "lone wolf or has any connection with any extremist groups", the prosecutor general said, adding that analysis of physical and digital evidence was continuing. The focus has now turned to how a man flagged for extremism ended up in a commercial cockpit. Three people with knowledge of the case, including a Gulf and a Western diplomat, told Reuters that Oman had barred al-Hammami from flying over concerns that he had adopted extremist views; he was moved to an administrative role at Oman Air before being hired by flydubai. A Middle Eastern source told Fox News that al-Hammami had worked for Oman Air but was let go when radical ideology was found on his cell phone, and that flydubai did not check with Oman Air before hiring him. A regional official said he was born in the UAE and that his mother is Syrian. Other details emerging in reporting deepened the alarm. CNN reported that a deleted LinkedIn profile in al-Hammami's name was updated about nine hours after the incident with clips filmed inside a Boeing 737 Max, ending with a photo of al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri. He had completed a distance-learning aviation management course at Buckinghamshire New University in 2023; the university said he did no pilot training there. The Wall Street Journal reported that flydubai pilots undergo pre-flight security screenings and annual medical checks, while first officers graduating to captain face in-house psychological checks — it is unclear whether al-Hammami underwent one. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that Israel was looking into whether the co-pilot had acted under anyone's direction. "He came to crash the passengers on board," Netanyahu said, warning that anyone involved would pay a "heavy price".