Flydubai Captain: Co-Pilot Asked to Pray, Then Struck Him With Axe — Al-Qaeda Propaganda Calls for More Attacks

The captain of the Flydubai jet targeted in Wednesday’s attempted hijacking said his co-pilot asked to pray just minutes before striking him from behind with a cockpit crash axe, as new evidence revealed the suspect’s apparent affinity for al-Qaeda and pro-al-Qaeda propaganda calling for further attacks on aircraft carrying Americans and Israelis.

Captain Smit Machchhar, who was badly wounded during the attack aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, gave his most detailed account yet of the ordeal Saturday in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It was a normal flight,” Machchhar said, recalling that his co-pilot, 29-year-old Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, told him that he wanted to pray.

Machchhar said the request did not initially strike him as unusual and that he turned forward out of respect.

“Suddenly, after four or five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head,” he said.

“My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft,” Machchhar continued. “But after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other. That’s when I realized it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

The United Arab Emirates’ attorney general revealed Saturday that Hammami had armed himself with the Boeing 737 MAX’s cockpit crash axe — an emergency tool kept aboard commercial aircraft — and attacked Machchhar before attempting to seize the flight controls in what Emirati authorities formally described as an attempted “terrorist attack.”

Badly injured and with his vision blurred by repeated blows to the head, Machchhar said he then felt the aircraft “sharply going down.”

He initially tried to open the cockpit door but was stopped by Hammami, who was also preventing crew members outside from entering with the door’s access code. Lying on the cockpit floor as he heard screams from the cabin, Machchhar said he summoned what strength he had left for one final attempt.

“I had one last fight left in me,” he said. “If I don’t do it, I’m going to die.”

Machchhar lunged for the door and managed to open it.

“People were waiting to pounce back, and take control, and the rest is what you know, sir,” he told Netanyahu.

Israeli passengers rushed the cockpit, with passenger Yaniv Hayun grabbing Hammami by the neck and pulling him away from the controls as others restrained him. Hayun briefly helped stabilize the aircraft before off-duty pilots aboard the flight took over and ultimately brought the badly damaged jet down safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

As investigators reconstruct what happened inside the cockpit, new evidence is also emerging about Hammami’s apparent affinity for al-Qaeda.

CNN reported Saturday that accounts bearing Hammami’s name featured footage of Israeli aircraft alongside images of prominent al-Qaeda figures.

One video, filmed in part from the cockpit of a Boeing 737 MAX at Dubai International Airport, zoomed in on an El Al aircraft before ending with images of Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as al-Qaeda leader, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, an al-Qaeda loyalist whose 2009 suicide bombing in Afghanistan killed seven CIA personnel and two others.

The video was posted to Hammami’s LinkedIn account roughly nine hours after Wednesday’s attack, when Hammami was already in custody. CNN said it could not determine who published the material or whether it had been scheduled in advance. The same videos reportedly appeared around the same time on an Instagram account bearing his name before that account was deleted.

Separate reporting by the Telegraph found more than 2,000 posts from a social media account strongly linked to Hammami dating to 2021 and 2022, including repeated endorsements of violence against women, severe religious punishments, and other extremist rhetoric.

The disclosures come as pro-al-Qaeda propaganda is openly celebrating the Flydubai attack and calling for further attacks on aircraft carrying Americans and Israelis.

The latest edition of Al-Bayan, a weekly publication produced by the pro-al-Qaeda media outlet Al-Yaqin, reportedly led with the attempted hijacking under the headline “Between 11 September and 30 September,” explicitly placing Wednesday’s attack alongside the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The war isn’t over yet — planes carrying Zionists, Americans and all the other infidels fighting against Islam are still hovering in the skies and can be targeted, as happened on September 11th and 30th,” the publication stated, according to the New York Post.

The article reportedly paired an image of an aircraft striking the World Trade Center with imagery from the Flydubai attack.

Despite the al-Qaeda imagery found on accounts bearing Hammami’s name and the subsequent propaganda celebrating the attack, investigators have so far established no operational connection between Hammami and al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. The UAE investigation is examining his motives, planning, and any possible outside links.

UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash warned Saturday that the attack underscored a broader continuing threat from extremism.

“The region’s struggle with extremism persists, and justifying terrorism through hate speech is part of the danger, not its margins,” Gargash said. “The latest terrorist operation is a new warning that the confrontation has not ended.”

The expanding investigation is also raising increasingly serious questions about how Hammami was able to return to a commercial cockpit after authorities in Oman had already identified him as a security concern.

Hammami had previously been barred from flying by Oman Air after concerns arose over his extremist views. CBS News reported Saturday that Omani authorities had monitored him and discovered that he was visiting extremist websites, prompting the airline to move him from flying duties into an administrative role.

Hammami eventually left Oman Air and later joined Flydubai, which hired him without conducting a background check with the Omani government, sources told the outlet.

Royal Air Maroc, where Hammami’s since-deleted LinkedIn profile claimed he subsequently worked, has said he underwent three months of theoretical pre-employment training in 2025 but was not ultimately selected for employment.

Hammami nevertheless went on to fly for Flydubai and had operated the Dubai-Tel Aviv route several times before Wednesday’s attack, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

The network further reported that Flydubai provided Israeli authorities with the names of the crew, including Hammami, before Wednesday’s flight, but his name triggered no warning. Israeli authorities were unaware that Oman had previously barred him from flying over extremist concerns.

Israeli security officials described the lapse as a “colossal security screw-up,” saying Hammami had been planning the attack for some time while Israel had “not a scrap of information on him.”

The revelation has prompted Israeli and foreign authorities to examine whether other pilots from hostile states have been flying foreign carriers into and out of Ben Gurion Airport. Pilots from Iran, Syria, Iraq and other hostile countries have done so in recent years, sometimes using second passports, according to the network.

The revelations have also exposed confusion over which Israeli agency is responsible for vetting foreign flight crews. The Tax Authority said Israel receives complete passenger and crew manifests before departure, while the Transportation Ministry said it does not receive pilots’ names in advance for background checks and stressed that it is “not an intelligence body.”

The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has pointed to the Transportation Ministry as responsible for security involving foreign airlines, while Transportation Minister Miri Regev has said determining security threats is the responsibility of Israel’s security establishment.

Israeli investigators, meanwhile, had still not been given direct access to Hammami as of Saturday and were relying on information supplied by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, according to the network.

Hammami, who remains in UAE custody, is cooperating with investigators and has indicated that he intended to crash the aircraft in Israel, ABC News reported, citing sources briefed on the investigation. Authorities are still working to determine whether he acted alone or had outside assistance.

Netanyahu has said Hammami underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination” and intended to crash the aircraft with everyone aboard.

“He intended to crash the plane with all its passengers on board,” Netanyahu said this week. “We are now investigating whether he was sent, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.”

For Machchhar, however, the difference between catastrophe and survival came down to his final effort to open the cockpit door.

“You are a hero of Israel, you are a hero of India, and you are a hero of the entire world,” Netanyahu told the wounded captain Saturday.