Israeli journalist Amit Segal is reporting that Hamam Al Hammami, the Omani pilot who brutally attacked the captain of a flydubai plane he was co-piloting in an attempted hijacking "said during his interrogation that he had planned to crash the plane" into the terminal at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Israeli investigators were sent to the United Arab Emirates, where Al Hammami is "currently undergoing a second round of interrogation," to participate in the investigation, CBS News reported Sunday morning.
According to Segal, Al Hammami said that's why he waited to attack the captain until they were over Jordan and "planned to make a normal landing approach and, in the final seconds, when interception would no longer be possible, crash the plane into the terminal."
Breaking: The Omani pilot said during his interrogation that he had planned to crash the plane into Ben Gurion Airport. That is why he attacked the other pilot only while over Jordan, near Israel. He planned to make a normal landing approach and, in the final seconds, when interception would no longer be possible, crash the plane into the terminal. The plot was thwarted only thanks to the fateful decision of the injured Indian pilot to open the door at all costs.
— Amit Segal (@AmitSegal) October 4, 2026
Meanwhile, CBS also reports that, "while all avenues are still being explored" in the investigation, according to their sources Israeli investigators currently believe that Al Hammami was likely a "lone wolf" attacker, albeit one who was clearly radicalized by ISIS/Al-Qaeda propaganda.
Those same sources told CBS that when Al Hammami moved to Dubai, "Flydubai hired him without vetting him with the Omani government," that while Al Hammami has Omani citizenship, he wasn't born there, and that his mother was born in Syria. They added that it's possible Al Hammami had dual citizenship (presumably UAE), which would explain how he was allowed to fly into Israel.
At this point, the one thing that's extremely clear is that a string of bureaucratic failures in multiple countries nearly led to a major terrorist attack.