Israeli official alleges flydubai pilot planned to crash plane into Tel Aviv airport

The Omani pilot accused of attempting to hijack a flydubai plane bound for Tel Aviv intended to target Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s most senior security official has confirmed.

Eytan Ben-David, the national security adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu and a former aviation security chief, said the pilot had been planning last week’s attack for months, and might have abandoned an earlier attempt in July because someone he knew was among the crew.

“He was here for the first time in July, then on the second time that month, one of his friends or family was in the crew so he aborted and delayed,” Ben-David told the London Telegraph.

“He wanted to commit a terror attack to crash into Ben Gurion Airport.”

Ben-David’s account suggests that last week’s midair incident was not a spontaneous attack, but the culmination of a plan first considered months, if not years, earlier.

Ben Gurion is Israel’s busiest international airport, with about 2.5 million travellers believed to have passed through it in September. The attempted hijacking on September 30 fell during Sukkot, a seven-day Jewish autumn harvest festival that begins five days after Yom Kippur.

Hamam al-Hammami, 29, the co-pilot, an Omani national born to an Omani father and Syrian mother, joined Oman Air in 2018 and became a pilot in early 2022.

He was grounded in 2024 after concerns were raised about his interest in extremist material online and was reportedly put through a deradicalisation program and moved to a desk job, before leaving the airline in early 2025.

He later travelled to Morocco and sought work with Royal Air Maroc, undergoing three months of preliminary training in 2025 before the airline rejected him for employment.

Al-Hammami joined flydubai in February this year and was subsequently assigned to flights to Israel, despite a ban on pilots from enemy countries. He is now in the United Arab Emirates’ custody after initially being detained in Saudi Arabia following the emergency landing in Tabuk.

Ben-David said investigators believed al-Hammami was most likely a lone actor rather than part of an Iranian-directed operation or terrorist organisation.

US vice president JD Vance also said this week that he had not seen anything conclusive yet on an Iranian role in the flydubai incident.

“It’s a gamble. I can’t be sure,” Ben-David said. “When it happened I thought to myself, it’s a lone wolf and not someone sending him, the Iranians or an organisation. It seems that he was doing it by himself.”

However, he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received intelligence indicating that the pilot had undergone radicalisation.

“It seems he was brainwashed and in the process of radicalisation,” he said.

The case has raised questions about how the pilot was cleared to operate flights to Israel.

Ben-David said procedures already existed requiring crew lists to be sent to Israel and subjected to security checks. He pointed to a 2016 incident in which an Iranian pilot flying for Turkish Airlines was detected only after landing in Israel and subsequently sent back to Istanbul.

“In the past, the Iranian pilot was taken out because of these checks,” he said. “He was sent back to Istanbul. I don’t know what happened since then. I can’t say this procedure is working in recent years ... We have to do better.”

He said the failure would now be examined by investigators, adding: “The problem is we are not implementing our own rules.”

Calling the episode a disaster and embarrassing, he said the implications could stretch beyond Israel, forcing airlines worldwide to reconsider how pilots and crews are vetted.

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