FlyDubai Co-Pilot Told Interrogators His ‘Dream’ Was to Crash the Jet Into Ben Gurion Airport, Reports Say

MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2026 — The co-pilot accused of attacking his captain aboard a FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv last week told interrogators in the United Arab Emirates that his “dream” was to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport — and that he had chosen the airline specifically because it flies to Tel Aviv. The new accounts of his questioning, reported Monday by Channel 12 via The Times of London, the Jerusalem Post via the New York Post, The Media Line, and Reuters, describe an attack the suspect says he planned long before flydubai ever hired him.

That last detail, reported by Reuters citing two Israeli officials, is the most chilling of the new disclosures. Al-Hammami told UAE interrogators that the September 30 attack was not a plan he hatched in the cockpit but one he carried into the job. “I tried to get hired by all the airlines,” he said, according to Reuters. “I checked which ones flew to Tel Aviv. That’s why I chose flydubai. I planned [the operation] even before I was hired.” He joined the airline eight months ago.

The plan for Ben Gurion

According to Channel 12’s reporting, cited by The Times of London, al-Hammami told interrogators he intended to approach Ben Gurion Airport for what looked like a normal landing — and then, in the final seconds, when interception would be impossible, crash into the terminal. That, the account says, is why he waited until the plane was roughly 10 minutes from Israel before attacking his captain. The jet was over Jordanian airspace when the assault began, Channel 12 reported, per The Times.

The Jerusalem Post, quoted in the New York Post’s coverage, carried his reported description of the ambition in his own words: “The dream was to crash into Ben-Gurion [Tel Aviv] airport.” Ynet, also via the Post, reported that he considered the attack “fast enough that Israeli jets couldn’t scramble in time” — the reason the timing, ten minutes out, mattered.

The Media Line, in its own account of the interrogation, reported the same primary target — the airport — alongside an alternate target, a Tel Aviv skyscraper.

The other plan: a tower in Tel Aviv

But the airport was only one version of the plot. The Times of London reported that al-Hammami’s other plan was to murder Captain Smit Machhar outright, continue along the scheduled route unnoticed, and then fly the aircraft into one of the Azrieli towers in Tel Aviv — three blocks from the Kirya, Israel’s military headquarters — in what the paper described as a 9/11-like attack.

Contingency targets also included a Tel Aviv skyscraper or a U.S. military base in Jordan, according to Ynet’s reporting, via the nationpress account of the interrogation. What united the plans, across every reported account, was the premise: a passenger jet, full of fuel, aimed at an Israeli landmark with no time for the air force to respond.

A plan that predated the job

The Reuters reporting, attributed to two Israeli officials briefed on the interrogation, adds a second unsettling layer: this was not al-Hammami’s first attempt. He had operated a Tel Aviv flight earlier this year, Reuters reported, and intended to hijack and crash the plane then — but opted not to. Why he held back is unclear, though officials reportedly believe he knew someone onboard that flight.

The UAE prosecutor general has called the September 30 incident a “terrorist attack,” Reuters reported. The UAE has not announced formal charges against al-Hammami, it is not known whether he has legal counsel, and Oman — his country of nationality — has not commented. Reuters said it could not independently reach al-Hammami.

What investigators say about him

The Times of London’s reporting sketched the background investigators have assembled: al-Hammami is 29, the son of an Omani father and a Syrian mother. He lived in Syria during the civil war, and posted online messages in support of al-Qaeda, according to the paper. He studied a distance-learning aviation management course at Buckinghamshire New University and graduated in 2023, a fact the university confirmed to The Times. Israeli officials believe he acted as a “lone wolf,” the paper reported.

These biographical details come from investigators and officials speaking to reporters — they have not been independently verified, and no court has weighed them. The distinction matters: what follows below is a case still in its investigative phase, described through the accounts of people briefed on it.

What happens next

Captain Machhar, the pilot who was attacked, is recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, the New York Post reported. Al-Hammami is in UAE custody. According to the Post, a senior Emirati source told Ynet the co-pilot is expected to face the death penalty, with prosecutors seeking the harshest penalty available.

The Post also reported that Mossad investigators and Israeli aviation experts have landed in Abu Dhabi to take part in the investigation — a measure of how seriously Israel is treating an attack aimed, in the suspect’s own reported words, at its largest airport and its skyline.

The attack was foiled because the people on that plane fought back. Passengers and crew subdued al-Hammami after he turned on his captain, and the jet landed safely in Saudi Arabia — first in Tabuk, according to The Media Line, before the flight’s intended destination receded into the background of a much darker story. What the interrogation accounts now describe is a man who, by his own reported admission, spent eight months in an airline uniform working toward a single day. That he never got that day is the only part of this story that went right.

Elsewhere in today’s newsroom: tonight’s Saints–Falcons “Domecoming” anniversary edition of Monday Night Football, our Vegas daily roundup, early Week 6 storylines around the NFL, and this week’s music roundup.