UAE prosecutor calls the flydubai cockpit attack a terrorist act as investigators describe a Ben Gurion plan

The co-pilot accused of attacking the captain of flydubai flight FZ1073 told Emirati interrogators that he meant to fly the Boeing 737 MAX into Ben Gurion airport or a tower block in Tel Aviv, Israeli officials with knowledge of the probe said on Monday. The United Arab Emirates attorney-general, Hamad al-Shamsi, had already called the Wednesday attack a terrorist act. He said the investigation would establish motives and any links, and that results would be announced when it finished. There was no immediate comment from Emirati or Israeli authorities on the crash plan itself.

FZ1073 was bound from Dubai to Tel Aviv with more than 180 passengers. The co-pilot wounded Captain Smit Machchhar with the emergency crash axe kept in the cockpit. Passengers and others overpowered him. The aircraft did not leave the crew's control for long enough to change course. Israeli representatives are being updated as questioning continues in the UAE.

What the officials say he told investigators

Israeli media, citing sources familiar with the probe, said the co-pilot described a two-step plan. He would fly the aircraft as normal into Israeli airspace, take landing clearances from Ben Gurion, and then crash the jet into the airport or into a tower in central Tel Aviv, on the model of the 11 September 2001 attacks. A third source briefed on the UAE probe told CBC that he had planned to crash Wednesday's flight into Ben Gurion. The same source said he had operated an earlier flight to Tel Aviv this year, intended to hijack that one, and changed his mind because he knew someone on board.

Two Israeli officials told CBC he said he had planned the attack before flydubai hired him. Reports in Israel and Italy, including Haaretz citing Corriere della Sera, said he intended to shut the engines down. Those accounts are not attributed to a named UAE investigator. Reuters has not independently reached the man, who is in UAE custody. Multiple reports have named him as Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national. Israeli officials have said he is from Oman and have not used the name in public. The UAE and flydubai have not confirmed the identity. Until they do, the name remains a report from people with knowledge of the case, not an official identification.

Lone actor, so far

The sources quoted by Israeli outlets said he most likely acted alone, not for a group or a foreign government. CBS, relayed by The Times of Israel, carried a similar lone-attacker reading from Israeli investigators sent to Dubai. Al-Shamsi has not adopted that conclusion. His Saturday statement left motive and links open. A lone-actor finding, if the UAE reaches one, would still leave the hiring question: how an Omani co-pilot with, on the Israeli account, a plan formed before employment reached the right-hand seat of a Dubai-Tel Aviv sector.

Flydubai is owned by the Dubai government. The Dubai-Tel Aviv route reopened under the Abraham Accords and has been a ordinary commercial sector, not a special security flight. An attack from inside the cockpit uses a tool the airline is required to carry, the crash axe, and a clearance the airport is required to give. That is a different problem from a passenger breach of the flight deck. Screening of crew, and the rule for when a second pilot can be alone with the axe, are the operational questions the airline has not answered in public.

What is settled and what is not

Settled, on the attorney-general's words: an attempted terrorist act, a wounded captain, a co-pilot in custody, a Boeing 737 MAX that reached neither the airport nor a tower. Not settled: the name, any organisational link, and whether the engine-cutoff detail is the suspect's account or a reconstruction. Israeli officials are relaying what they say he told UAE interrogators. Those relays are not a charge sheet.

The practical consequence is already on the route. Crews on Dubai-Tel Aviv sectors now fly a leg on which a co-pilot has admitted, according to officials briefed on the questions, that he once aborted a similar plan because he knew a passenger. Airlines do not publish how they re-clear a cockpit after an insider attack. Regulators in the UAE and Israel have not said whether the axe stays in the cockpit on this city pair, or whether two-person rules on the flight deck will change. Al-Shamsi said the full account would come when the investigation ends. Until that paper is out, the only official label on the event is his: a terrorist act, still under questioning.