9/11 inspired flydubai co-pilot's alleged plot to crash plane into Ben Gurion Airport

On September 30, a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv never reached its destination as planned. The co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, 29, attempted to seize control of the aircraft with the stated intention of crashing it into the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's primary international hub. The captain and several passengers physically restrained him and regained command of the plane, preventing what could have been a catastrophic loss of life.

According to preliminary findings released by the UAE attorney general Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, al-Hammami's plot was modeled directly on the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Those attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people across four hijacked commercial aircraft, had lodged themselves in his mind as a template for action. The UAE investigation concluded that al-Hammami wanted to replicate that operation using his position as a pilot, deliberately targeting the passenger terminal to inflict maximum casualties. This was not an impulsive act. He had flown to Ben Gurion Airport on two separate occasions before September 30, familiarizing himself with the route and the airport's layout in preparation for what he intended as a suicide attack.

The radicalisation that led to this moment began years earlier. In 2017, while studying in Australia, al-Hammami started consuming extremist publications and online content that glorified terrorist groups and suicide operations. He did not passively absorb this material. Investigators found that he deliberately exposed himself to radicalising content and underwent boxing training under a private coach, describing his actions as psychological and physical preparation for carrying out his plot. The decision to become a pilot, according to his own confessions to authorities, was directly connected to this ideological commitment. Flying an aircraft became, in his mind, the instrument through which he would execute his attack.

Al-Hammami's employment history reveals a pattern of movement through the aviation industry. He worked for Oman Air from 2020 to 2024, a period during which the airline removed him from flight training due to concerns about his radical views and reassigned him to a different role. He then joined Royal Air Maroc in 2025 but remained there only a few months before the airline declined to hire him permanently following a three-month training period. In January 2026, he was hired by flydubai, the low-cost carrier based in the United Arab Emirates.

Flydubai's hiring process is now under investigation. The airline conducted standard security and professional vetting: al-Hammami held a valid pilot's licence, possessed a certificate of good conduct, and passed required examinations. According to the UAE attorney general, nothing in those procedures revealed his extremist inclinations or his intention to carry out a terrorist attack. He met every documented requirement. Yet the airline had no visibility into the concerns that had prompted Oman Air to remove him from flight training, nor into the fact that Royal Air Maroc had declined to employ him. The question now facing aviation authorities is whether existing screening mechanisms are sufficient to catch individuals whose radicalization occurs outside the formal employment process.

Al-Hammami has told investigators that he acted alone. Authorities are continuing to verify that claim. The attempted hijacking was stopped before it could unfold further, but the incident has exposed a gap in how the aviation industry identifies and prevents individuals with extremist commitments from accessing positions of operational control. A man who spent years consuming material that glorified mass casualty attacks, who deliberately trained himself physically and psychologically for violence, and who had been flagged by at least one previous employer, was nonetheless cleared to sit in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft carrying passengers to one of the world's busiest airports.