Failure of special services of three countries: how did a radical pilot end up at the controls of FlyDubai

On September 30, a FlyDubai plane was operating flight 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv. Mid-flight, the 29-year-old co-pilot Hamam al-Hamami, having excused himself allegedly for prayer, unexpectedly attacked Captain Smith Machar and struck him several times with an emergency axe. The wounded captain managed to unlock the cockpit door, after which passengers and crew members neutralized the assailant and pulled the airliner out of a dangerous dive.

Investigative bodies of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel classified this as an attempted terrorist attack. According to preliminary data, the co-pilot intended to crash the plane in Tel Aviv. Direct links of al-Hamami with major terrorist groups have not yet been identified, but the investigation showed that signals about his radicalization were ignored for several years.

First warnings, left in Oman

29-year-old Hamam al-Hamami was born to an Omani father and a Syrian mother. As a teenager, he often traveled to Syria during the civil war, later studying in Australia. In 2018, the man got a job at the state airline Oman Air, and in early 2022, he became a pilot.

In 2024, Omani authorities noticed that the man was visiting extremist websites and blogs. His views caused such serious suspicions among the special services that al-Hamami was banned from flying, sent to a deradicalization program, and transferred to administrative work.

However, Oman made a fatal mistake. The man was not officially stripped of his pilot's license and was not entered into international databases. As a result, information about his dangerous views remained within the country and was not transmitted to neighboring Gulf states.

Staff shortage and airline oversight

In early 2025, al-Hamami left Oman Air. In the summer, he tried to get a job at Moroccan Royal Air Maroc and underwent three months of training there, but he was ultimately not hired.

In February 2026, al-Hamami got a job at the low-cost airline FlyDubai. The low-cost carrier, rapidly expanding its route network and needing hundreds of new pilots, limited itself to a formal check for a criminal record. Representatives of the carrier did not contact the compatriot's previous workplace in Oman to find out the reasons for his removal from the controls.

Moreover, the young pilot was assigned to one of the most responsible and politically sensitive routes — flights to Israel, where he had already made several departures. Now, UAE authorities are investigating FlyDubai employees who were responsible for vetting the candidate.

Bureaucratic inconsistency in Israel

The last barrier to preventing a terrorist attack should have been the Israeli security services. According to local law, pilots from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel are prohibited from flying to that country. Oman does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, so al-Hamami should not have been in the cockpit of a plane flying to Tel Aviv.

Israel receives lists of passengers and crew members from foreign airlines in advance. FlyDubai also submitted such a list before flight 1073. Since 2023, a special database of this information has been operating in the country, created among other things to prevent terrorism. Access to the lists can be requested by the Ministry of Transport and special services, including Shin Bet and Mossad.

However, no proper verification occurred. The Israeli Ministry of Transport, responsible for the security of foreign flights, stated that it considered itself unauthorized to check foreign crews and relied on the carrier itself to comply with these requirements.

Although a closed state audit in May 2024 already warned of blurred responsibilities and shortcomings in the control of foreign flights, the situation did not change, and the suspicious pilot freely received permission to enter Israeli airspace.

Conclusions for the aviation industry

The incident caused serious concern among experts, as both the UAE and Israel possess some of the most advanced surveillance and intelligence systems in the world.

The incident revealed the main weakness of modern aviation security. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, aviation made cockpits as inaccessible as possible to potential attackers. But the Germanwings disaster in 2015, when the co-pilot deliberately flew the plane into a mountain, showed the flip side of such protection: the threat can come from a person already in the cockpit.

Therefore, aviation security specialists believe that vetting a person before they even enter the airport should play a key role. In the case of FlyDubai flight 1073, there were several such opportunities. None of them worked.

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