Report: flydubai copilot acted alone, planned to crash jet into Tel Aviv

Update, 4 October, 18:08 Israel time

The copilot intended to switch off the engines and fly the aircraft into skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, Haaretz reported, citing a Sunday article in Corriere della Sera. According to that account, his plan also involved killing the captain covertly so that the authorities would not become suspicious, and getting the jet to Tel Aviv before Israeli fighter aircraft could shoot it down.

The Jerusalem Post carried the same claims about a plan to kill the pilot unnoticed and strike a Tel Aviv tower, and Israel Hayom described the plot as alleged, also crediting the Italian paper. None of the three outlets attributes the plan directly to Israeli investigators or the airline.

The new reporting describes the engine shutdown as part of an intended plan. Earlier coverage, based on video reviewed by two 737 captains, suggested the engines may actually have been cut in flight. The reports do not reconcile these two accounts.

A photo caption published by The Jerusalem Post identifies the service as flight FZ1073 from Dubai and states that the attack forced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on September 30, 2026, after which passengers were brought on to Ben Gurion airport aboard another flydubai plane.

Haaretz also noted a report from Saturday that Israeli government officials had been given the crew and passenger list for the flight in advance.

The story as first reported

Israeli investigators looking into the attack on a Tel Aviv-bound flydubai flight have so far concluded that the copilot, Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, most likely worked without accomplices, The Times of Israel reported, citing the American broadcaster CBS. According to that account, al-Hammami assaulted his captain on Wednesday in what appears to have been an attempt to bring the aircraft down, and every line of inquiry remains open.

Separately, a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the flight published by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera points to the possibility that the copilot switched off the engines while the aircraft was airborne, Ynet reported. Two captains qualified on the Boeing 737 reviewed video footage for the Italian paper and noticed that emergency lighting came on while the plane was still flying, which they read as a sign the engines may have been cut after the throttles were pushed fully forward.

What the Israeli investigation reportedly found

The lone-attacker assessment comes from Israeli investigators who were dispatched to Dubai, the Hebrew news channel News.co.il said in a post citing CBS. Political commentator Amit Segal relayed the same finding on his Telegram channel, attributing it to reports, and added that there is suspicion the copilot turned off the engines during the incident.

The Hebrew phrase used in these reports, mefagea boded, translates roughly as "lone attacker". Israeli security services and media use it for someone who carries out an attack without direction from, or a confirmed tie to, an organised group. In English coverage the same idea is often rendered as "lone wolf", the phrase The Times of Israel used in its headline. The designation describes how an attack was carried out; it does not on its own settle the question of what motivated it.

The Times of Israel described the event as a terrorist attack that took place on September 30. It noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that al-Hammami had "underwent Islamist radical indoctrination", and that Israeli officials have said they are examining possible connections to terrorist organisations and to enemy states. The CBS finding as reported does not close off those lines of inquiry; the outlet stressed that all avenues are still being examined.

The engine shutdown question

The suggestion that the engines were switched off in flight rests on an analysis of video, not on a released flight recorder or an official statement. As described by Ynet, the reasoning of the two 737 captains runs as follows: emergency lights became visible in the cabin while the aircraft was in the air, and that pattern is consistent with the engines having been shut down after the copilot first drove the thrust levers to their maximum position. The thrust levers, sometimes called throttles, are the controls pilots use to set engine power.

Ynet framed this as a possibility rather than a finding, and Segal's post described it as a suspicion. Neither report attributes the engine shutdown claim to Israeli investigators or to the airline.

Ynet also raised a further point from the Italian analysis: it remains unclear who sent the aircraft's emergency code. The report posed this as an open question and did not answer it.

Political fallout in Israel

The incident has also become a domestic political issue. The Times of Israel's live coverage on the same day noted that Miri Regev was repeating her denial that she bears responsibility for security failures linked to the flydubai flight, and was responding to criticism from opposition figure Yair Lapid. The report did not detail what those failures were alleged to be.

What the reports do not say

Several important points are missing from the material available so far:

• None of the reports describe how the flight ended, where the aircraft came down or landed, or whether anyone on board was hurt.
• The engine shutdown theory comes from two pilots reviewing video for an Italian newspaper. No investigative body is quoted confirming it.
• The lone-attacker assessment is attributed to CBS and described as initial. No Israeli agency is named as the source, and no evidence behind it is set out.
• The reports do not explain how this assessment fits with the earlier statements about indoctrination and the inquiry into links with organisations or states.
• Who transmitted the emergency code remains, by Ynet's own account, unanswered.
• The specific security failures at the centre of the political dispute are not described.