What was the first clue? Apparently and shockingly, it may have been the 17,000-foot dive over Saudi Arabia.
How did an Omani pilot with a track record of religious extremism get assigned to a FlyDubai cockpit on a flight to Tel Aviv? The Wall Street Journal updates its reporting from the past few days with an explanation … of sorts. It paints an increasingly suspicious series of events in a passive “mistakes were made” narrative that leaves responsibility in limbo. According to this narrative, everyone knew something, but no one bothered to do much of anything until it was too late:
Oman had scrutinized his online habits and decided he showed too much interest in radical ideology to trust as a pilot at state carrier Oman Air, where he worked. They banned him from flying, sent him to a deradicalization program and put him in a desk job but didn’t flag their concerns more broadly, people familiar with the matter said.
When FlyDubai hired him in February, it didn’t contact Oman to vet his experience. The company did do a criminal-background check, a person familiar with the process said. The airline later put him on the sensitive route to Tel Aviv, where he flew multiple times, people familiar with the matter said. …
The last chance to stop him before the airport came in Israel. It was a low bar—pilots from countries like Oman that don’t have diplomatic relations are barred from flying to the country, so Hammami should have been stopped outright.
Israel requires foreign carriers to submit lists of inbound passengers and crew in advance. FlyDubai sent the manifest for Flight 1073, said Israel’s Tax Authority, which maintains the country’s database of flier information. But the Ministry of Transportation, which oversees foreign carriers, said it didn’t believe it had the authority or required expertise to vet flight crews.
The ministry has never asked for a passenger or crew list since the database was set up in 2023. It says it didn’t know it could. Instead, the ministry says FlyDubai agreed in writing to check its pilots’ backgrounds and nationalities.
Any of these could sound plausible. In combination, however, it sounds like bureaucratic buck-passing. The UAE knows how to impose a security regime effectively and efficiently; they live in the same neighborhood as Israel, and they have an enemy in common who consistently tests it. The failures here are so obvious and straightforward that it’s difficult to believe they were not intentional.
Let’s start with how al-Hammami became available to work for FlyDubai. Oman Air had suspended him from flight duties because he literally posted a video of El Al planes along with a picture of al-Qaeda’s former #2:
Emirati airline flydubai reportedly hired Omani national pilot Hamam al Hamami without conducting a background check with the Omani government, sources told CBS on Saturday. …
The Omani government had been monitoring al-Hamami during his tenure with Oman Air – the airline where he had previously worked – and discovered that he had visited extremist websites, according to the CBS report. This led to his being moved from a pilot position to an office role at the company, prompting his resignation and eventual move to flydubai.
At one point, sources told CBS, al-Hamami posted a video of El Al planes in Dubai with a photo at the end of the clip showing Ayman al-Zawahiri, a well-known al-Qaeda leader who was killed in a 2022 US drone strike.
In the security business, that’s known as a red flag. Oman Air apparently never told FlyDubai about this, even though they found it disturbing enough to ground al-Hammami. And FlyDubai, owned by the UAE’s sovereign wealth fund, never thought to run a background check on someone whose previous employer had grounded them? Come on, man.
The Israelis had insisted on higher levels of security, but as the Times of Israel notes, they had grown complacent in their trust of their new partners in the UAE:
Separate internal documents reported by Army Radio on Sunday indicated that concerns over the division of responsibility for screening foreign airlines had been raised for years.
In 2021, the security cabinet removed responsibility from the Shin Bet and determined that the Transportation Ministry’s Civil Aviation Authority would “check that the security instructions in the foreign countries that are not classified as highest risk meet the regulations of international treaties.”
A classified 2024 state comptroller report found that the ministry was not meeting its obligations, according to a document shared by Army Radio.
On May 23, 2024, the security cabinet ordered the National Security Council to establish a team within 90 days composed of representatives of the Transportation Ministry, the CAA, Shin Bet, Mossad, and Finance Ministry to “examine the security framework for international commercial flights into Israel, and to put together recommendations for changes.”
The result was a nearly successful terror attack of the very kind that Israel wanted to prevent in their security agreements. According to multiple media outlets, al-Hammami has told interrogators that he intended to fly the plane into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv in the most literal sense possible:
Hamam al-Hammami, who is under arrest and being interrogated in the United Arab Emirates, told investigators that he intended to continue flydubai Flight 1073 as normal after disposing of the captain, to receive all necessary landing clearances, and to then crash into a building or jet at the airport, Hebrew media outlets reported.
By waiting until the last moment, he would have prevented anyone from realizing what was happening, raising the alert and stopping him from carrying out his plan.
According to the reports, that was why al-Hammami waited until the aircraft was over Jordan to seize control of the cockpit. He was foiled because Captain Smit Machchhar, despite having been attacked and stabbed by al-Hammami, managed to open the cockpit door, enabling a handful of Israelis to tackle and immobilize al-Hammami, with one of them stabilizing the plane before two off-duty pilots on board took over the controls.
Reports said al-Hammami had been at Ben Gurion Airport several times in recent months after flying in with flydubai. He told investigators that when he came in June, he devoted his entire focus to collecting intelligence and planning his attack.
Go figure that a fan of al-Zawahiri would want to replicate his greatest atrocity. Gee, if only someone had checked his social media or his employment history!
Is this level of failure possible? Yes. Is it likely? No. The terror co-pilot may be freely sharing his plans, but interrogators need to dig further to expose his other conspirators. Don’t be surprised if Iran comes into this picture, along with other IRGC moles in the UAE’s air operations.
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