The Omani co-pilot who axed the captain of a FlyDubai passenger jet reportedly intended to take control of the aircraft and crash it into a building in Tel Aviv.
The Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera, citing testimonials from “safety authorities” who obtained information from the crew and others, said the co-pilot planned to kill Capt. Smit Machchhar and fly the plane to Tel Aviv and crash it into a skyscraper before the Israelis had time to scramble their air defenses.
Co-pilot Hammam al-Hammami pretended to offer prayers inside the cockpit, grabbed the emergency crash ax and struck Capt. Machchar from behind. The captain first thought he had been hit by part of the plane but realized it was the co-pilot attacking him.
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According to the newspaper, the captain was struck in the head and his arm was nearly severed. He opened the cockpit door but the co-pilot shut it. He opened it again, which allowed several passengers to rush the cockpit and stop the attacking co-pilot, who at that point had changed plans and was sabotaging the flight controls to send the plane nose-diving into the desert.
The passengers subdued the co-pilot and one of them pulled the aircraft out of a steep dive. The plane’s sharp descent caused the rudder to partially shear off.
Two off-duty pilots on board flew the plane to Saudi Arabia and landed safely in what is now viewed as a heroic thwarting of a terrorist attack.
With the investigation into the FlyDubai incident underway, preliminary details have highlighted several major security lapses.
Oman has no diplomatic relationship with Israel and is investigating how the co-pilot received clearance to fly to Tel Aviv.
Oman had previously banned the co-pilot from flying due to concerns about his “radical ideological views,” The Wall Street Journal reported. It’s unclear how a citizen of Oman, an Arab country that has no diplomatic relations with Israel, was allowed to fly a planeload of Israelis to Tel Aviv.
NBC News reported that the co-pilot, identified as Hamam al-Hammami, had posted on social media that he wanted to kill Jews.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has long-standing agreements with foreign carriers to keep pilots from flying into the country if they are citizens of nations that don’t maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
The Associated Press reported Sunday that authorities in the United Arab Emirates shared with Israel a list of passengers and crew — including the accused attacker — ahead of the FlyDubai flight.
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