On September 30, somewhere over the Mediterranean, a cockpit became the site of a struggle that aviation security systems were designed to prevent. The attack by Flydubai co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami on Indian Captain Smit Machchhar — thwarted by passengers and crew — has since revealed a years-long trail of extremist and misogynistic ideology that multiple employers had already encountered and, in at least one case, acted upon. The incident forces a reckoning with a quiet but consequential question: when warning signs follow a person across borders and employers, who bears the responsibility of
Deleted posts reveal misogynistic views of Flydubai co-pilot accused in cockpit attack
Captain Smit Machchhar was attacked in the cockpit; the aircraft plunged sharply before passengers and crew overpowered the attacker.
A pilot with documented ideological concerns had been cleared to fly
Mark
So we have a co-pilot who attacked his captain mid-flight. What do the deleted posts actually tell us about why he did it?
Mimi
They show a pattern of thinking—misogyny, religious extremism, a preoccupation with controlling women's behavior. But here's the thing: the posts themselves are from 2021 and 2022. They don't directly explain the September 30 attack.
Luke
Right. And that's important to say clearly. The posts reveal his worldview, but they're not a confession. The LinkedIn posts that appeared after the attack—those are more suggestive of motive, but we don't know if he posted them himself or if they were scheduled.
Mark
He'd been flagged before, though. At Oman Air.
Mimi
Yes. Removed from flying duties because of extremist views. Government surveillance had caught him visiting radical websites during training. Then he was barred from flying in Oman altogether.
Luke
But then he went to Royal Air Maroc, and then to Flydubai. So the question becomes: did those airlines know? And if they did, what did they do about it?
Mark
That's the real failure, isn't it?
Mimi
It appears to be. He had a documented history of ideological concerns at one airline, and somehow he ended up in the cockpit of another.
Luke
We should be careful about the word "somehow." It suggests mystery. It might just be poor vetting or poor communication between airlines. We don't know yet.
Mark
What about the attack itself? What happened in the cockpit?
Mimi
Al-Hammami attacked Captain Machchhar. The plane descended sharply. Passengers and crew overpowered him before it could crash.
Luke
So the immediate threat was contained. But the larger question—how did someone with this profile get hired—that's still open.
Mark
And we still don't know his actual motive.
Mimi
No. The posts and the LinkedIn content suggest ideology, but they're not proof of why he did what he did.
El Pulso
- A commercial flight to Tel Aviv plunged sharply over the Mediterranean after a co-pilot attacked the captain in the cockpit, with passengers and crew intervening to prevent catastrophe.
- Nearly 3,000 deleted tweets recovered by AI revealed al-Hammami's preoccupation with controlling women's lives and a worldview entangled with extremist religious ideology.
- LinkedIn posts appearing hours after the attack — featuring al-Qaeda figures and images of Israeli aircraft — raised the possibility that the assault was ideologically motivated, not merely impulsive.
- Oman Air had already removed al-Hammami from flight duties over extremist concerns, and Omani surveillance had flagged his visits to radical websites during pilot training — yet he continued moving between airlines.
- The incident has exposed a structural gap in aviation vetting: pilots who carry documented red flags from one carrier can, it appears, find cockpits at another.
On September 30, somewhere over the Mediterranean, a cockpit became the site of a struggle that aviation security systems were designed to prevent. The attack by Flydubai co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami on Indian Captain Smit Machchhar — thwarted by passengers and crew — has since revealed a years-long trail of extremist and misogynistic ideology that multiple employers had already encountered and, in at least one case, acted upon. The incident forces a reckoning with a quiet but consequential question: when warning signs follow a person across borders and employers, who bears the responsibility of heeding them?
On September 30, a Flydubai flight to Tel Aviv descended sharply over the Mediterranean when co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani citizen, attacked Indian Captain Smit Machchhar in the cockpit. Passengers and crew overpowered al-Hammami before the aircraft could be lost. What followed was an investigation that would reach back years into a carefully curated — and carefully deleted — online life.
Using artificial intelligence, CNN recovered nearly 3,000 deleted tweets from 2021 and 2022. The posts revealed a man deeply preoccupied with women's submission: he wrote of seeking a wife willing to wear a niqab and abandon her career, and suggested that mixed-gender workplaces could spiritually 'ruin' religious women. His worldview, as reconstructed from the deleted record, was one in which gender control and religious ideology were tightly bound together.
The timeline grew more troubling after the attack. Around nine hours after the incident, posts appeared on a LinkedIn account in al-Hammami's name featuring cockpit footage, images of Israeli airline planes, and photographs of former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and a bomber who killed seven CIA officers in 2009. A second post paired an AI-generated image of Islam's three holiest sites with a poem about rejecting humiliation. Whether al-Hammami had posted these himself or scheduled them in advance remained unknown.
Most damaging to the institutions involved was what had already been known. Oman Air had removed al-Hammami from flight duties after concerns about his extremist views emerged, and Omani government surveillance had reportedly detected his visits to radical websites during pilot training. He was reassigned to desk work, eventually left, and moved through Royal Air Maroc before landing at Flydubai — where, apparently, none of this history prevented him from entering a cockpit.
The attack on Captain Machchhar has left aviation regulators and airlines confronting an uncomfortable truth: documented warning signs, when they belong to a pilot rather than a passenger, can still go unheeded across borders and employers — until they cannot be ignored any longer.
On September 30, a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv descended sharply over the Mediterranean. Inside the cockpit, Indian pilot Captain Smit Machchhar was being attacked by his co-pilot, Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani citizen. Passengers and crew managed to overpower al-Hammami before the aircraft could be brought down. What followed was an investigation that would uncover years of deleted social media posts revealing a pattern of deeply misogynistic and extremist thinking.
Al-Hammami had spent years curating an online presence that CNN later analyzed using artificial intelligence to recover nearly 3,000 deleted tweets from 2021 and 2022. The posts painted a portrait of a man preoccupied with controlling women's lives and deeply skeptical of mixed-gender workplaces. In one post from February 2022, he described his mother's difficulty finding him a wife willing to wear a niqab and abandon her career after marriage. According to al-Hammami's account, prospective families had rejected these conditions until his mother revealed he was a pilot—at which point, he claimed, their resistance crumbled. In another post from January 2022, he questioned whether women could survive professionally in environments where men and women worked together, suggesting that religious women could be "ruined" by such exposure.
But the social media trail extended beyond personal grievances about marriage and gender. The deleted posts revealed what CNN described as a deeply religious worldview intertwined with misogynistic ideology. Yet these posts alone, investigators understood, did not necessarily explain why al-Hammami had attacked his captain. The timing of other posts, however, suggested a possible window into his thinking. Around nine hours after the September 30 incident, two posts appeared on a LinkedIn account bearing al-Hammami's name. One contained cockpit footage of a Boeing 737 Max, images of Israeli airline planes, and ended with photographs of former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who carried out a 2009 suicide bombing that killed seven CIA personnel and two others. A second post featured an AI-generated image of Islam's three holiest sites—Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem—paired with a poem about rejecting humiliation and defending one's dignity. Whether al-Hammami had posted these himself or scheduled them in advance remained unclear.
What emerged during the investigation was that al-Hammami's employers had been aware of concerns about his ideology long before the cockpit attack. He had worked for Oman Air for approximately seven years before being removed from flight duties. Two sources told CNN that the airline had grown concerned about extremist views. CBS News reported separately that Omani government surveillance had detected his visits to radical websites during his pilot training, prompting Oman Air to reassign him to desk work. He eventually left the airline. His LinkedIn profile, since deleted, indicated he had moved to Royal Air Maroc between June 2025 and January 2026 before joining Flydubai. Al Arabiya English reported that al-Hammami had been barred from flying in Oman itself due to concerns about extremist ideology—a fact that raised urgent questions about what vetting procedures Flydubai had conducted when hiring him.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated publicly that al-Hammami appeared to have undergone "Islamist radical indoctrination," though he offered no public evidence for the claim. What was certain was that a pilot with a documented history of ideological concerns and a trail of deleted posts expressing misogynistic and extremist views had been cleared to sit in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft carrying hundreds of passengers. The attack on Captain Machchhar and the subsequent discovery of al-Hammami's online history had exposed a gap in aviation security—one that raised questions about how thoroughly airlines vet pilots who move between carriers, and what responsibility they bear when warning signs have already been documented elsewhere.
Citas Notables
Al-Hammami appeared to have undergone 'Islamist radical indoctrination'— Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
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