The co-pilot who tried to crash a Flydubai jet full of Israelis had flown into Israel before. Hamam al-Hammami piloted the airline's Dubai-Tel Aviv route several times before last Wednesday's attack, according to a Channel 12 report, and Israeli authorities are checking whether he flew it just days earlier.
The report said he had planned the attack for a long time, and yet Israel "didn't have a scrap of information on him." Ynet reported that investigators are examining the earlier flights, a line of inquiry that contradicts initial Israeli denials.
He was not an exception. Channel 12 reported that dozens of Omani pilots have flown into Israel in recent years, even though the arrangements under the Abraham Accords bar pilots whose countries have no relations with Israel. The Shin Bet never examined where Flydubai's pilots came from, the report said, beyond asking the airline not to use pilots from such states.
No Israeli body was checking. The Transportation Ministry is legally required to oversee how foreign airlines vet pilots flying to Israel but does not do so, and neither the Shin Bet nor the Mossad checks the backgrounds of foreign pilots, according to the report. The ministry has since said it does not run background checks on foreign airlines' pilots and that such flights are not 100% safe. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged a loophole that al-Hammami was able to exploit.
The prior flights change the picture of what he could have done. A pilot who had already flown the approach to Ben Gurion would know the procedures for entering Israeli airspace and landing there. Commentator Eyal Ofer argued on X that al-Hammami did not need to act mid-flight at all: he could have flown a routine approach, given air traffic control and air defenses no reason for suspicion, and turned the aircraft only in the final seconds.
Ofer pointed to the US Air Force refueling tankers parked on the tarmac at Ben Gurion as the obvious target. American tankers have been stationed at the airport since the buildup to the war with Iran, and Israel agreed with Washington in July to cap their number there at 20.
Sources briefed on the investigation have told ABC News that al-Hammami indicated he intended to crash the aircraft in Israel. He attacked instead over Saudi airspace, where the captain and a handful of Israeli passengers stopped him.
