DUBAI — The co-pilot who allegedly attacked his captain with an emergency axe and tried to crash a FlyDubai passenger jet bound for Israel has been identified as Hamam al-Hammami, a 29-year-old Omani national — and the United Arab Emirates’ attorney-general said Saturday the assault is being investigated as an attempted “terrorist attack.”
Dr. Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, the UAE attorney-general, said investigators are working to establish “the full circumstances, motives, and any links” behind the attack on Flight FZ1073, along with technical examinations of physical and digital evidence, according to The Times.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8, carrying 182 people including 166 Israelis from Dubai to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on Sept. 30, plunged some 14,000 feet after al-Hammami allegedly struck the captain with the cockpit crash axe and tried to seize the controls. Passengers and crew stormed the flight deck and restrained him while two off-duty pilots from the same airline stabilized the aircraft. The jet made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
What has emerged since raises grave questions about how al-Hammami came to be in the cockpit at all. According to reports, he had previously been barred from flying in Oman over concerns he had adopted extremist views. In 2024, while training with Oman’s flag carrier, he was found in possession of extremist materials and moved to an administrative role, the Tribune Times reported. An anonymous Gulf diplomat confirmed his identity to investigators, who are now trying to determine whether he acted as a “lone wolf” or had connections to extremist groups.
Al-Hammami completed a distance-learning degree in aviation management at Buckinghamshire New University in Britain in 2023. A university spokesman said: “He did not undertake any pilot training at the university. Our thoughts are with the injured pilot, crew and passengers involved in this incident.”
CNN reported that a deleted LinkedIn profile bearing the name Hamam al-Hammami was updated with two posts about nine hours after the incident — one featuring video clips filmed inside a Boeing 737 Max that ended with a photograph of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former al-Qaeda leader killed in a 2022 U.S. drone strike. The Telegraph analyzed more than 2,000 posts from an X account named “Pilot Hamam al-Hammami,” published between November 2021 and August 2022, containing violent and misogynistic content.
Israeli officials have claimed the co-pilot was attempting a 9/11-style attack; those claims remain assertions by Israeli officials, not findings of the investigation. President Donald Trump said this week it was “possible” Iran or its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was connected to the incident — a claim he presented as preliminary and unverified, and one for which Reuters reported no evidence has emerged.
