DUBAI—Before Hamam al-Hammami stood behind his captain on FlyDubai Flight 1073 and raised an emergency ax to begin the assault that nearly brought down the plane, there had been ample opportunity for authorities in three countries to keep him from getting anywhere near that cockpit.
Oman had scrutinized his online habits and decided he showed too much interest in radical ideology to trust as a pilot at state carrier Oman Air, where he worked. When FlyDubai hired him in February, it didn’t contact Oman to vet his experience . It was a low bar—pilots from countries like Oman that don’t have diplomatic relations are barred from flying to the country, so Hammami should have been stopped outright. Israel requires foreign carriers to submit lists of inbound passengers and crew in advance. With the string of missed opportunities, the dramatic fight for survival by the wounded captain and a handful of passengers is now being overshadowed by a growing realization there was a massive security failure on several fronts. It also points to a conundrum of aviation security. Regulators buffeted by major failures like the Sept. Security experts say the onus has to be on intelligence services to identify and stop threats before they ever get to the airport.
FlyDubai sent the manifest for Flight 1073, said Israel’s Tax Authority, which maintains the country’s database of flier information. The ministry has never asked for a passenger or crew list since the database was set up in 2023. A classified 2024 report flagged the ministry for failing to adequately secure foreign carriers’ flights . 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. and the intentional crash by the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 in 2015 are caught in a tug of war—protecting against dangerous passengers by securing the cockpit or guarding against rogue pilots by making it easier to intervene.
They banned him from flying , sent him to a deradicalization program and put him in a desk job but didn’t flag their concerns more broadly, people familiar with the matter said. The company did do a criminal-background check, a person familiar with the process said. The airline later put him on the sensitive route to Tel Aviv, where he flew multiple times, people familiar with the matter said. Emirati authorities are currently investigating FlyDubai staff who were involved in the hiring process, people familiar with the investigation said. FlyDubai said it wouldn’t comment while the investigation was ongoing. But the Ministry of Transportation, which oversees foreign carriers, said it didn’t believe it had the authority or required expertise to vet flight crews. It says it didn’t know it could. Instead, the ministry says FlyDubai agreed in writing to check its pilots’ backgrounds and nationalities. Security experts said the failure is remarkable given the surveillance and intelligence capabilities of the U.A.E. and Israel, and the obvious threats to the route the co-pilot was allowed to fly. “If this was a dedicated jihadist terror attack, there are multiple levels of failure that happened from an intelligence perspective way before we get to the fact that someone may have missed something in security screening,” said Matthew Borie, chief intelligence officer and co-founder of Osprey Flight Solutions. Officials in the U.A.E., Oman and Israel all privately said there were significant failures across the board—from the U.A.E. and Israel’s vetting to Oman’s communication of its concerns about Hammami.
The last chance to stop him before the airport came in Israel.
The U.A.E. declined to comment while the investigation into the incident and its causes is ongoing. A spokeswoman for the Omani government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The pilot managed to open the cockpit door, letting in a group of rescuers who subdued the co-pilot and pulled the plane out of a dangerous dive. All three are investigating whether he acted alone. He lives in Dubai but traveled frequently as a teenager to Syria during that country’s long civil war. Investigators are looking into the possibility he began to radicalize in the war-torn country where Islamist rebels fought against the ruling Assad regime. It disallowed him from flying, made him take a deradicalization program and gave him an administrative job. He traveled to Morocco that summer and tried to get a job with flag carrier Royal Air Maroc. This February, he joined FlyDubai, a budget carrier owned by the city’s flagship Emirates Airline aggressively hiring pilots to feed its growth.
The security missteps culminated in a dramatic series of events a little over halfway into Flight 1073’s trip to Tel Aviv last week. Hammami is 29 years old, born to an Omani father and Syrian mother, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. He joined Oman Air in 2018 and became a pilot in early 2022. In 2024, authorities found he was browsing extremist websites and blogs and grew concerned about his radical views. He left Oman Air in early 2025, people familiar with his career said. The airline launched in 2009 and has been expanding quickly. Its more than 1,300 pilots fly to 140 airports in cities like Sarajevo, Damascus and Tashkent, often moving workers from South and Southeast Asia to more lucrative markets in Central Europe and the Middle East. Last year, it posted passenger growth of 17% in the Middle East.
The airplane’s captain, Smit Machchhar, said his co-pilot excused himself to pray then struck him several times with an onboard emergency ax. The U.A.E.’s attorney general said Saturday that the co-pilot had tried to commit an act of terrorism. Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Israel all suspect he was trying to crash the plane in Tel Aviv, people familiar with their thinking said. They haven’t turned up any links to any foreign power or major terrorist organization, they said. Hammami studied in Australia, a period Israel and the U.A.E. are scrutinizing for signs of budding radicalism, some of the people familiar with the matter said. The Victorian Joint Counter Terrorism Team said it is investigating the co-pilot’s links to the country. He underwent three months of training with the company, but ultimately wasn’t hired, Moroccan state media said, citing the company.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he ordered a review of the security of foreign airline flights to the country.
There were 382,000 commercial pilots around the world in 2025, according to aviation training technology company CAE. The industry will need to hire another 267,000 by the middle of the next decade, it said. A 2023 law set up the database of those lists managed by Israel’s Tax Authority with the primary goal of preventing terrorism. A classified May 2024 report by Israel’s comptroller general warned Israel’s aviation security had grown lax and identified major issues in the way foreign airlines entering Israeli airspace were secured.
It found that officials in the Ministry of Transportation were failing in their oversight in part due to manpower and budget issues, a person familiar with the report said. Ben David said Flight 1073 almost ended in disaster due to negligence. Global demand for pilots is running high. International aviation licensing is largely on a country by country basis. Israel should have been aware of Hammami’s presence in the cockpit. Foreign airlines submit lists of passengers and crew to Israel ahead of time. Under Israel’s division of labor, the Shin Bet internal security service oversees the country’s airlines. The database makes that work easier. It relies on foreign carriers to make those checks in line with its requirements. “Framework-wise, the Ministry verifies with the countries from which flights depart that the airlines’ pilots undergo background security checks in accordance with international regulation. Responsibility for security in Israel was fragmented, and the lines of responsibility weren’t always clear, it found. The divergent treatment was evident this year. In February, security officials stopped Israel’s own airlines from flying between Dubai and Tel Aviv for several months amid the risks posed by the war against Iran and long-held concerns about gaps in the Dubai airport’s security for flights to the country. FlyDubai, however, continued to work the route. It has become a crucial connection between Israel and the rest of the world, maintaining service almost continuously throughout the past three years of war that began in Gaza and spread to Lebanon and Iran. “It seems that the names weren’t properly checked and there wasn’t proper vetting. “We need to treat this incident as if a disaster happened.
People familiar with the events said Oman also mishandled the situation. But if Oman had formally pulled Hammami’s license over its concerns, it likely would have been flagged to the U.A.E., people familiar with the matter said. Concerns about extremism should have been flagged around the Gulf as well, the people said. It falls to the Transportation Ministry to oversee the pilots and crew on foreign carriers’ flights to make sure they come from friendly countries, said Eytan Ben David, former director of the counterterrorism bureau in the Israeli prime minister’s office and former deputy head of the aviation security division in El Al, Israel’s flagship airline. Ben David said that around a decade ago he was alerted by the Transportation Ministry that Turkish Airlines intended to place an Iranian pilot on a flight to Tel Aviv based on a staff list the airline had sent. “We stopped it immediately,” Ben David said. The legislation says authorized bodies like the Ministry of Transportation and other security agencies including the Shin Bet and Mossad can ask to review lists to vet people on flights. The ministry said it was never told the database was operational or could be accessed. A person familiar with the database said the ministry has never asked. On the question of stopping onboard threats, the ministry said it is responsible for the security of incoming flights but isn’t itself responsible for vetting flight crews and lacks the intelligence capabilities to do so. “The Security Division at the Ministry of Transport has been responsible for security arrangements for incoming foreign aviation to Israel since 1977,” it said. The ministry said it required FlyDubai to assign pilots from countries with diplomatic relations with Israel and conduct background checks, and didn’t itself check or approve Hammami. Israeli airlines got closer scrutiny, the person said. Israel should have caught the Omani pilot based solely on his nationality, Ben David said. Pilots who should have been excluded by their nationalities have been flying to Israel more frequently, a sign enforcement had grown sloppy, people familiar with the matter said. This is how we got here,” he said. Write to Summer Said at [email protected] , Anat Peled at [email protected] and Benoit Faucon at [email protected]
To help meet its needs, FlyDubai set up a program last year to train pilots from scratch and operates its own flight training center.
