Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that al-Hammani planned to secretly kill Machchhar, shut down the aircraft’s engines and crash the plane into a building in Tel Aviv on September 30.
Hamam al-Hammani, who is under arrest and being questioned in the UAE, told investigators that he intended to continue Flight 1073 normally after disposing of the captain, obtaining landing clearance and then crashing the aircraft into a building or another plane at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, Israeli media reported.
 | |
| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Minister of Transportation Miri Regev in the Knesset : File snap |
The co-pilot planned to wait until the aircraft was over Jordan before attempting to seize control, apparently to avoid raising the alarm and give himself enough time to carry out the attack. He planned to carry out the attack in July but abandoned it at the last moment because he was friends with a member of the crew, Israeli media reported.
The flydubai co-pilot Hamam al-Hammani, who attacked Captain Smit Machchhar in the Dubai-Tel Aviv flight cockpit last week, had planned to kill him, hijack the aircraft and carry out a 9/11-style attack by crashing the plane into a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, according to investigators.
An initial Israeli investigation also found that the 29-year-old Omani national acted alone in the attack.
Opposition leaders in Israel have stepped up calls on Sunday for Transportation Minister Miri Regev to resign or be fired over her ministry’s failure to prevent last week’s attack by an Omani copilot aboard a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv.
The demands came as the attempted terror attack on flydubai Flight 1073 prompted mounting scrutiny of Israel’s oversight of foreign airlines, including reports that senior Israeli bodies had warned for years that the Transportation Ministry was not properly carrying out its obligatory security checks on foreign flights, including oversight of their pilots.
“From the moment the scale of the failure began to emerge, the leadership, as is its custom, disappeared. In a worthy, properly functioning government, [Regev] would have submitted her resignation yesterday evening.
Since she did not, the prime minister should have fired her immediately,” Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot said in a statement on Sunday.
The plot bore similarities to the infamous September 11, 2001, attacks, when 19 al-Qaida-trained hijackers seized control of four US passenger planes, and deliberately crashed three of them into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in that massacre.
On September 30, Hammami attacked Machchhar, an Indian pilot, with a crash axe in the cockpit and attempted to take control of the flight. During the struggle, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 witnessed a steep descent from around 36,000 feet to nearly 17,000 feet in about two minutes, causing extreme structural stress and stripping parts of the plane's rudder.
There were 174 passengers on board.
The disaster was averted when an injured Machchhar managed to open the cockpit door, allowing the crew members and passengers to breach the flight deck and overpower the co-pilot. Two off-duty pilots who were also onboard later took control of the flight and made a safe landing at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia. The passengers were later flown to Ben Gurion Airport.
al-Hammami had also visited Ben Gurion Airport several times in recent months while working for flydubai.
During a visit in June, he reportedly focused on gathering information and planning the attack.
The Opposition leaders drew a direct connection between the flydubai failure and the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 invasion of southern Israel, arguing that the government’s failure to prevent the two attacks, as well as its refusal to investigate and accept responsibility, reflected the same failures of leadership.
Israel will mark the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks, which killed 1,200 people, on Wednesday.
The government, Regev and the Transportation Ministry have denied responsibility for any security breach preceding the flydubai incident,
Smit Machchhar, India pilot, has said that there was tense moment inside the cockpit, describing how a prayer break was followed by two impacts and a desperate attempt to regain control.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who praised the Indian pilot for his actions and invited him, along with PM Narendra Modi, to light a ceremonial torch at Israel's next Independence Day celebrations.
The incident took place aboard flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30.
No comments:
Post a Comment