Investigation Uncovers Alleged Suicide Plot on FlyDubai Flight - critical summary review

What happened on flight FZ1073

At 7:05am local time on 30 September, flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv, a scheduled service operated by Flydubai, the low-cost airline owned by the government of Dubai. There were 174 people on board, 166 of them Israelis. The aircraft climbed to 34,000 feet and, a little more than two hours later, according to the tracking site Flightradar24, dropped more than 17,000 feet in about two minutes.

Inside the cockpit, the co-pilot had attacked the captain, the Indian pilot Smit Machchhar, with the emergency crash axe. Wounded, Machchhar managed to open the cockpit's security door. Another pilot who was on board to fly the return leg had noticed the door opening and closing repeatedly and, with a cabin crew member and several passengers, pulled the injured captain out and restrained the co-pilot, according to the Emirati findings. One passenger said he held the controls during the critical minutes; a dentist among the passengers gave first aid to the captain, who had deep cuts to his head and hands. The transponder was switched to code 7500, the signal for unlawful interference, and two reserve pilots travelling on the flight landed the plane at 9:45am in Tabuk, in north-western Saudi Arabia. Both pilots were taken to hospital and later transferred to Abu Dhabi, while the passengers continued to Israel on another aircraft. On 8 October, Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, awarded five of those passengers the Presidential Prize for Civil Heroism.

A plan, not a sudden breakdown

On Friday, the attorney-general of the United Arab Emirates, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, released the conclusions of the criminal inquiry opened on 1 October, through the Emirati state news agency WAM. He said the co-pilot had confessed to a "premeditated terrorist plot" to take control of the aircraft and "launch a suicide attack targeting the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion airport", Israel's main international gateway, near Tel Aviv, "with the aim of causing the greatest possible loss of life".

According to the statement, he drew inspiration from the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed after four commercial aircraft were hijacked. "The idea of carrying out a similar operation using an aircraft became firmly established in his mind, which, according to his confessions, was connected to his decision to pursue a career in aviation," the statement said.

Investigators also found that 30 September was not his first flight to Tel Aviv: he had taken part in two earlier flights to Ben Gurion to familiarise himself with the route and the airport. The BBC reported, citing sources, that he told investigators he intended to fly normally until entering Israeli airspace and receiving landing clearance, then turn towards the airport or a building in central Tel Aviv, and that he had considered bringing down an earlier Tel Aviv flight but gave up after realising he knew someone on board.

Al-Shamsi said the suspect gave a detailed confession in the presence of his lawyer and "admitted that he had acted alone, without the involvement of others, although investigations are continuing to verify this claim".

Three airlines, and no alarm

The attorney-general said signs of the 29-year-old Omani's "drift towards extremism and terrorism first emerged in 2017, while he was studying in Australia", where, according to the statement, he was influenced by extremist literature and online content glorifying terrorist organisations and suicide attacks. He told investigators he had prepared "psychologically and physically" by increasing his exposure to such material and taking boxing lessons with a private coach.

His career then crossed several countries. He worked for Oman Air from 2020 to 2024, trained for three months at Royal Air Maroc in 2025 as part of a pre-hiring process (the Moroccan airline told the Associated Press he was not selected), and joined Flydubai in January 2026. Regional officials told the BBC he had been barred from flying by Oman Air and moved to an administrative job because of concerns about his extremist views. The Wall Street Journal reported the same ban in Oman; there is no confirmation that the Omani authorities passed that information to other countries or airlines.

The Emirati inquiry examined Flydubai's recruitment and concluded he met the professional and security requirements: a pilot's licence, a certificate of good conduct and the required checks. "None of the procedures revealed any indications of his extremist views or his intention to carry out a terrorist plot," the statement said. According to the regional officials quoted by the BBC, those standard checks did not examine a candidate's background for signs of radicalisation. Israeli aviation rules also bar pilots who are citizens of countries without formal diplomatic relations with Israel, such as Oman, from operating flights to the country. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot had got around those restrictions.

Reviews opened in several countries

Netanyahu, who praised the captain and the passengers for preventing what he called "a September 11 disaster" and said the co-pilot had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination, ordered a review of every aspect of the security of foreign civil aviation flying to Israel. In the United States, Vice-President JD Vance said flight security procedures were also under review. In Australia, a joint counterterrorism team made up of the federal police, Victoria state police and the country's security agency is investigating his links to the country, where he held a student visa from 2014 and studied between 2015 and 2017 without completing his engineering degree. Police in New Zealand confirmed he had done part of his flight training there, and the authorities opened their own inquiry. Saudi Arabia, where the plane landed, opened an investigation focused on security failings, running in parallel to the Emirati criminal case.

The Emirati statement also said he had become acquainted in Australia with an organisation called "MyCentre", run by a Lebanese man known as Abu Hamza. Neither is accused of any wrongdoing. The man, identified in Australian media as Samir Mohtadi, said in a statement cited by the public broadcaster ABC that he "strongly rejects" any attempt to link him or the centre to the suspect, calling the claims "unfounded, misleading".

What is known, and what is still unknown

Established so far: the attack took place on 30 September, the captain was seriously wounded, the aircraft landed safely in Saudi Arabia and the suspect is in Emirati custody. Prosecutors say he confessed to a premeditated suicide plot against the Ben Gurion terminal, inspired by the 2001 attacks, prepared over years and rehearsed on two previous flights to the same airport. They also say Flydubai's hiring procedures were followed and turned up nothing.

Open: whether he acted alone. The Emirati authorities say they do not believe a group such as al-Qaida or Islamic State was involved, Israeli sources quoted in the press have said the same, and there is no confirmation of any link to Iran, but the verification is not finished, and Israel has said it wants to take part in the inquiry and to establish whether anyone instructed him. Also unresolved are the result of the Saudi safety investigation, the Australian and New Zealand inquiries into his time in both countries, and the question the case put to regulators: whether information held by one airline about a pilot, such as a flying ban over extremist views, should reach the next employer, and what changes, if any, aviation authorities will make to pilot screening and background checks between carriers.