Israeli security confirms Omani pilot planned months-long attack on Ben Gurion

On September 30th, a Flydubai aircraft bound for Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after a co-pilot attempted to seize control of the plane. What followed was not merely an isolated incident of air rage or mechanical failure, but the unraveling of a months-long conspiracy that had been building in the mind of a single man—one with access to the cockpit of a commercial airliner.

Eytan Ben-David, Israel's national security adviser and a former aviation security chief serving under Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed that the pilot had been planning to crash the aircraft into Ben Gurion airport, the country's busiest international hub. The attack was not spontaneous. It had been conceived months earlier, possibly years, and represented a deliberate targeting of one of the world's most critical pieces of aviation infrastructure. Ben-David told The Telegraph that the co-pilot had even attempted the attack once before, in July, but aborted the plan when he discovered that someone he knew—a friend or family member—was scheduled to be part of the crew that day. He waited. He planned. He tried again.

The man at the center of this plot was Hamam al-Hammami, 29 years old, born to an Omani father and Syrian mother. He had joined Oman Air in 2018 and earned his pilot's license in early 2022. By 2024, however, concerns had surfaced about his online activity—specifically his interest in extremist material. Oman Air grounded him, enrolled him in a deradicalization program, and reassigned him to desk work before he left the airline in early 2025. He then traveled to Morocco and applied to Royal Air Maroc, completing three months of preliminary training before being rejected. In February 2026, he joined Flydubai. Within months, he was assigned to flights heading to Israel—a country that maintains a policy barring pilots from hostile nations from operating its routes.

Ben Gurion airport processes roughly 2.5 million travelers each month. The September 30th attempt occurred during Sukkot, a seven-day Jewish autumn harvest festival that follows Yom Kippur by five days. Had the co-pilot succeeded, the consequences would have been catastrophic. Instead, the emergency landing in Tabuk prevented what could have been a mass casualty event. Hammami is now in custody in the United Arab Emirates, having been initially detained in Saudi Arabia.

Israeli investigators believe Hammami acted alone—not as part of an Iranian operation or a larger terrorist organization, though they acknowledge he showed clear signs of radicalization. "It seems that he was doing it by himself," Ben-David said, describing the assessment as a calculated judgment rather than certainty. "It's a gamble. I can't be sure." U.S. Vice President JD Vance echoed this assessment, stating he had seen no conclusive evidence of Iranian involvement. Yet Ben-David also noted that Netanyahu had received intelligence suggesting Hammami had undergone a process of radicalization—that he had been "brainwashed."

What emerges from Ben-David's account is a portrait of systemic failure. Israel maintains procedures requiring crew lists to be submitted and vetted before flights arrive. In 2016, these checks successfully identified an Iranian pilot flying for Turkish Airlines and prevented him from entering Israeli airspace; he was sent back to Istanbul. Yet somehow, a co-pilot with a documented history of extremist interest and a clear intention to attack Ben Gurion airport was cleared to operate flights into the country. "I don't know what happened since then," Ben-David said. "I can't say this procedure is working in recent years. We have to do better. The problem is we are not implementing our own rules."

Ben-David called the failure a "disaster" and "embarrassing." He acknowledged that investigators would now examine how the vetting process broke down and why existing safeguards did not catch what should have been a detectable threat. The implications, he suggested, extend far beyond Israel. Airlines worldwide may now be forced to reconsider how thoroughly they screen pilots and crew members—a reckoning that could reshape aviation security protocols globally. The question now is not whether such attacks can happen, but whether the systems designed to prevent them will finally be made to work.