Flydubai co-pilot planned to crash plane into Tel Aviv airport or building, reports say

BBC | David Gritten

An Omani co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, attempted to hijack Flydubai flight FZ1073 on Wednesday with the intention of crashing the Boeing 737 MAX into Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport or a tower block. The suspect attacked Captain Smit Machchhar with an emergency cockpit axe before being overpowered by passengers, allowing a relief crew to divert the aircraft safely to Saudi Arabia.

This near-disaster exposes critical vetting failures within regional aviation, as al-Hammami had previously been barred from flying by Oman Air due to his extremist views but subsequently secured employment with the Emirati carrier. Standard security checks failed to detect his radicalisation. Security was bypassed entirely. Furthermore, Israeli regulations prohibiting pilots from non-diplomatic nations like Oman from operating flights into domestic airspace were not enforced. While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a comprehensive review of foreign civil aviation security, bureaucratic friction persists between the Shin Bet, Mossad, and the Israeli Transport Ministry over passenger and crew vetting responsibilities.

Comment

The intelligence failure surrounding Hamam al-Hammami reveals a critical disconnect in regional threat-sharing mechanisms between Gulf aviation authorities and Israeli security agencies. Although Oman Air identified al-Hammami's extremist tendencies, the lack of a formalised intelligence pipeline allowed him to secure a flight-deck role at Flydubai. This gap bypassed the standard vetting protocols of the Shin Bet, which traditionally relies on pre-departure manifests to flag high-risk individuals entering Israeli airspace.

As a second-order consequence, this systemic blind spot will likely force the Mossad and Shin Bet to demand direct, unmediated access to the personnel databases of foreign carriers operating flights to Ben Gurion Airport. Such demands will inevitably clash with the sovereign data privacy laws of Abraham Accords partners like the United Arab Emirates. Consequently, the unresolved dispute between Transport Minister Miri Regev and Israeli intelligence agencies over vetting jurisdictions threatens to disrupt the bilateral civil aviation corridors established under these accords.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If the Shin Bet insists on unilateral vetting of foreign aircrews as a condition for airspace access, how will Abraham Accords partners balance these security demands against their own national sovereignty and data privacy laws?

The trajectory indicates that Gulf partners are highly unlikely to grant Israeli intelligence direct database access, preferring instead to establish a joint, anonymised threat-clearinghouse. However, my assessment is that until such a compromise is reached, the Shin Bet will resort to delaying landing clearances for carriers like Flydubai, effectively using operational friction to force compliance. This friction will test the resilience of the Abraham Accords' commercial foundations.

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