The United Arab Emirates general prosecutor continued its investigation over the weekend into the thwarted terrorist attack on the flydubai flight last Wednesday carrying a plane full of Israelis to Tel Aviv. Emerging new details of the initial attack on the aircraft’s pilot and the passengers’ brave recovery of the plane reveal just how close the Middle East came to witnessing a 9/11-style terrorist attack. Accounts of the incident from the ongoing investigation and passenger testimonies have also incited wider geopolitical issues. With Israel’s elections three weeks away, the flydubai incident has become a campaign tool to foreground national security and highlight the need for stronger regional partnerships.
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On Wednesday, September 30, flydubai flight FZ1073 was mid-flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv when the copilot Hamam al-Hammami attacked the pilot, Captain Smit Machchhar, in the cockpit with an ax in an attempt to take control of the plane. Flydubai is a Dubai-government owned commercial airline and on board flight FZ1073 were 174 passengers, mostly Israelis. The ax used in the assault was located in the cockpit as part of standard emergency protocol to break through the windshield or bulkheads as a means of emergency escape.
Hayun recalled that al-Hammami shouted “kill me, kill me” in English after he had been immobilized. “That means he had failed in the mission and preferred to die.”
During the altercation, the pilots lost control in the cockpit and the aircraft began to plunge nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds, reaching near supersonic speed that threatened to break apart the aircraft.
Covered in blood and nearly unconscious from the ax wounds, Captain Machchhar managed to unlock and open the cockpit hatch allowing access to the inside to concerned passengers. Several Israeli passengers overtook and apprehended copilot al-Hammami. An Israeli dentist onboard treated the injured Machchhar and kept him in stable condition. Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber by trade, managed to stabilize the plane as it nosedived by relying on what he could remember from watching Air Disasters TV shows.
Praised by both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Trump, Hayun has become a celebrity hero. A circulating social media meme shows a plastic figure of Hayun encased in a red glass box with the label, “In case of hijacking, break glass, release Israeli plumber.”
Two additional flydubai pilots were also flying as passengers because of the chance that the active pilots would time out if there was a flight diversion. These two pilots assumed control of the cockpit and landed the plane in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Captain Machchhar, and Indian national, was treated in Tabuk while al-Hammami, an Omani national, was apprehended by Saudi officials. Both have been repatriated back to the UAE where al-Hammami is under custody and Machchher is convalescing in an Abu Dhabi hospital. Machchhar “embodied the highest degrees of courage, responsibility, and care for human life,” Shiekh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, Dubai’s crown prince and UAE defense minister, posted on X after a visit to Machchhar’s hospital bed.
“I was trying to save my own life, but I also knew I couldn’t let all of them [passengers] die,” Machchhar said during a phone call to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I could feel that the aircraft was going down. I knew this was the last push, that the [cockpit] door was right there … I was being hit even then, but I just opened the door and everyone came in.”
Investigations into al-Hammami’s motives remain ongoing, although the logical conclusion presumed by Israeli, Emirati, and American investigators is that the copilot attempted to hijack the plane and crash it in Israel. One of the Israelis who stormed the cockpit noted that al-Hammami was “trying to destroy the controls in order to disable the plane,” while over Saudi airspace. Hayun recalled that al-Hammami shouted “kill me, kill me” in English after he had been immobilized. “That means he had failed in the mission and preferred to die.”
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When the Israeli passengers were repatriated, the incident quickly became fodder for the upcoming Israeli elections on October 27. Netanyahu, who is fighting to keep his seat as prime minister, has been accused by the opposition for allowing Hamas’s terror attack of October 7, 2023, to occur on his watch, and is being accused of failing to keep the country safe during the ensuing three years of war. Netanyahu’s opponents on the political left and right are linking the flydubai incident to the catastrophe of October 7 and blaming Netanyahu’s incompetent security establishment for once again missing early security warnings and leaving Israeli citizens to fend for themselves.
Netanyahu, however, has turned the repatriation of the flydubai passengers into a publicity stunt and is leveraging their act of national heroism to his benefit. Celebrating heroic acts of everyday Israelis right before the election helps shift the national focus away from October 7 and to the immediate national achievements under Netanyahu’s watch. The thwarted flydubai terrorist attack also reinforces Netanyahu’s claim that the region is still unsafe, and he is the right one for the job to ensure security.
While heroism and bravery thwarted flight FZ1073 from turning into a Middle East 9/11, it was the diplomatic maneuvers on the ground that kept the landed plane in Tubak from turning into a hostage-rescue mission.
The commercial liner flydubai runs daily flights between Tel Aviv and Dubai and symbolizes the commercial and political ties forged by Israel and the UAE in the 2020 Abraham Accords. It was also one of the only international airlines to remain operational while other international carriers cancelled Israeli flights after October 7.
Israeli Transportation Minister Miri Regev, however, has accused the airline of violating the two country’s aviation agreement which requires pilots operating flights to Israel to be citizens of countries which maintain diplomatic relations with Israel. Oman, where copilot Hamam al-Hammami is from, does not hold relations with Israel. Al-Hammami was also banned from flying with Oman Air because of alleged “extremist views” and was moved to an administration job before joining flydubai. Al-Hammami underwent the standard criminal background checks as protocol for joining the Dubai airline, but the extent to which he was vetted for extremist religious or political views is not clear.
Late last week, Netanyahu said that the co-pilot “underwent Islamist radical indoctrination” and discussed killing Jews on social media.
Saudi Arabia also does not maintain official diplomatic relations with Israel. While the two countries do cooperate on security and intelligence matters, especially in light of the recent Iranian wars, Riyadh has been cautious of joining the regional Abraham Accords in support of a Palestinian state. The absence of Saudi-Israel relations, however, did not stop the Sunni Saudi monarch from hosting Jewish Israeli guests in the event of an emergency. But while the Israeli passengers did receive care and treatment in Tabuk, there were limitations for repatriation.
The government in Riyadh refused Jerusalem’s request to send the Israeli Air Force or an Israeli commercial jet to Tabuk to repatriate the Israeli passengers under the assurance of a flag-state carrier. Instead, they were flown back to Tel Aviv by another flydubai plane.
Investigations into last week’s incident are still ongoing in Israel and the UAE. While the unfolding details certainly supports Netanyahu’s assessment that regional security is fragile, it also reveals that the frameworks for regional diplomacy is intact and functioning to prevent catastrophe even where diplomatic relations are absent.
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