UAE calls the flydubai axe attack an attempted terrorist act

UAE Attorney General Hamad Al Shamsi said on Saturday that the co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 attacked the captain with the cockpit crash axe and tried to take the aircraft, and that prosecutors are treating the act as an attempted terrorist attack.

The Boeing 737 MAX 8, registration A6-FKF, left Dubai International Airport for Tel Aviv on 30 September. Flight-tracking records cited by Flightradar24 put the takeoff at 03:05 UTC. Altitude fluctuations began at 05:21 UTC. Within the next minute the jet dropped about 14,000 feet. The Aviationist, citing tracking data, put that drop at less than 30 seconds. The crew transmitted emergency signals, turned away from the original track over Jordanian airspace, and landed at Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia.

Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was badly wounded. He told reporters he used what strength he had left to open the cockpit door so that people who had heard the struggle could get in. Passengers and a reserve pilot then overpowered the co-pilot and the aircraft was stabilised. Saudi authorities said both pilots were taken to hospital. Flydubai said the passengers were safe. Counts of who was on board differ by outlet: The National reported 172 passengers and crew, the Associated Press reported 182 people, and an early airline account put the passenger figure near 174, many of them Israeli. The investigation has not published a single manifest figure.

What the prosecutor has said, and what he has not

Al Shamsi's statement is the first official classification from the state that regulates the airline. He said investigators had established the use of the crash axe and the attempt to seize control. A crash axe is ordinary cockpit equipment, kept for cutting through wreckage after an accident, not as a weapon. He said the inquiry is still open on motive, on any wider links, and on the technical record from the aircraft. Findings will be released when what he called the necessary procedures are finished. The UAE has not, in that statement, named the co-pilot.

People with knowledge of the case have. Three sources, including a Gulf diplomat and a Western diplomat, told the Associated Press that the co-pilot is Omani national Hamam al-Hammami. Reuters reported the same name from a source with direct knowledge, confirmed by a second person briefed on the inquiry. A further person familiar with the matter told the AP that Oman had barred him from flying over concern that he had adopted extremist views, and that flydubai hired him after that bar. UAE authorities did not immediately confirm the identity or the Oman ban. Those claims sit in the reporting as attributed accounts, not as findings.

The political replies

Israeli officials described the struggle as an attempt to crash a plane bound for Israel. India and Israel both praised Machchhar in public. From a hospital bed in Abu Dhabi he spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He described the minutes in the cockpit as a fight for his life. Modi's call is a diplomatic fact as well as a personal one: an Indian captain, an Omani co-pilot named by diplomats but not by the UAE, a Dubai-registered jet, a Saudi diversion airfield, and an Israeli destination.

The route itself is part of the stakes. Flydubai has flown Dubai-Tel Aviv since the 2020 normalisation agreements opened commercial links between Israel and several Gulf states. A classified attempt to seize that flight, if the attorney general's wording holds, puts a crew member inside the security system that is supposed to keep the cockpit closed. Post-2001 cockpit doors were built to stop passengers forcing their way in. They do less against a pilot who is already on the right seat.

What remains to be established

Three questions are still open, and the public record does not answer them. First, whether Oman did bar al-Hammami, and if so on what date and on what evidence, because only an unnamed person familiar with the matter has said so. Second, what flydubai's hiring check recorded, and whether the airline saw a flag from Muscat. Third, whether the axe attack was a lone act or part of a plan with anyone outside the cockpit. Al Shamsi said that last question is inside the inquiry.

The aircraft is on the ground in Tabuk. The captain is in hospital in Abu Dhabi. The co-pilot is in custody. Until the prosecutor publishes the motive finding, the operational fact is the one the tracking tape already shows: a scheduled Dubai-Tel Aviv flight lost 14,000 feet in about a minute, and reached a Saudi runway only after people outside the cockpit door got it open.