Flydubai pilot planned a 9/11-style attack on Tel Aviv airport, source says

TEL AVIV — The pilot who allegedly tried to bring down an Israel-bound flight had been planning a 9/11-style attack by crashing into the country’s main airport in Tel Aviv, a Middle Eastern official has told NBC News.

The pilot, identified by NBC News as Hamman al-Hamammi, told investigators Monday that he wanted to evade Israel’s defenses and crash into the Ben Gurion Airport or another building, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.

An Omani citizen, multiple sources from three agencies briefed on the investigation and a diplomat in the Middle East identified al-Hammami. Authorities have not officially released the identity.

He is currently being questioned by investigators in the United Arab Emirates after he was transferred from Saudi Arabia. The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to an airport in Saudi Arabia, where it landed safely, after last week’s dramatic midair incident.

Emirati authorities said Saturday that the pilot attacked his fellow pilot, Capt. Smit Machchhar, with a crash axe and attempted to take control of the aircraft’s flight controls.

The jet which was carrying 174 mostly Israeli passengers then plummeted 14,000 feet in just 29 seconds, according to data from the aviation tracking service Flightradar24, causing panic onboard.

Machchhar, an Indian national and a veteran pilot of 17 years, said in a call Friday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his fellow pilot told him he was going to pray, something he didn’t consider unusual as observant Muslims pray five times a day.

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A few minutes later, he said he felt a strong blow to the head. “Because of his initial blows, my vision was almost like nothing, and I was completely blurred out,” he added. “The next feeling that I had was that the aircraft was sharply going down.”

A video of the call was released by Netanyahu’s office.

Initially, Machchhar said, he thought there was “catastrophic damage to the aircraft,” but once the blows kept coming he “realized that it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

In a separate call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, also Friday, Machchhar said he managed to open the cockpit’s door on the second attempt, despite the blows raining down.

“I gave everything that I had, and just went for the door and opened the door. And thankfully, people were waiting to pounce back,” he said.

Focus has shifted onto the missed security signals ahead of the flight.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that al-Hammami had “previously been banned from flying by Oman over concerns he had adopted radical ideological views.”

It is unclear how a citizen of Oman, an Arab country with no diplomatic relations with Israel, was allowed to fly the plane carrying Israelis to Tel Aviv.

According to Israeli law, airlines must provide information about passengers and crew members, including their names and nationalities, up to 48 hours before a flight.

Israeli investigators are leaning towards the assessment that the pilot was acting as a lone wolf, according to an Israeli official and a source familiar with the matter, although they said there is still more to learn about what led to his radicalization.

In the meantime, Netanyahu has called on the head of the National Security Council to appoint an examiner to review “all security aspects” of Israel’s civil aviation in the aftermath of the incident.

Elsewhere, Vice President JD Vance underlined the concerns potential security failures.

“That person should not have been flying an airline, and so we’re certainly looking at our procedures within the United States to make sure that people who are obviously flight risks are not getting behind the wheel of an airplane,” he told a reporter at Joint Base Andrews on Monday.