A 29-year-old Omani citizen, Hamam Al-Hammami, who served as co-pilot for Flydubai, has confessed to investigators that he planned a suicide attack inspired by the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, according to infohub.kz.
UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif Al-Shamsi stated that the defendant intended to crash a hijacked Boeing 737 Max passenger jet into the terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv to kill as many people as possible.
The suspect flew two flights to Tel Aviv to familiarize himself with the route and the airport. He passed all required security checks before joining Flydubai, providing a pilot's license and a clean criminal record certificate.
A Flydubai passenger plane flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30 made an emergency landing at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia after a hijacking alert. The cause was a fight in the cockpit, during which the aircraft plummeted from 9,410 to 5,105 meters in just 29 seconds.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 was carrying 174 people, including 27 children, most of them Israeli citizens. According to some passengers, screams were first heard from the cockpit, then the cockpit door burst open, and they saw that one pilot was wounded, his clothes covered in blood. He received first aid from a passenger who happened to be a doctor. Crew members and passengers also managed to subdue the attacker.
Two other pilots who were on board as passengers performed the landing in Saudi Arabia, preventing a crash. According to CNN, the plane was landed by two "reserve pilots" who were scheduled to operate the next flight.
Earlier, Kursiv reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Flydubai co-pilot who attacked the captain of the Dubai–Tel Aviv flight had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination.