A FlyDubai co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain with a cockpit emergency ax and tried to destroy an Israel-bound jet with everyone aboard. Passengers forced their way in, overpowered him, and helped put the aircraft on the ground in Saudi Arabia with 174 people still alive.
CBS News reported the attack unfolded on a Wednesday flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv as the plane neared Israel. The captain, wounded, fought long enough to unlock the cockpit door. Passengers subdued the co-pilot. Two off-duty pilots then took control and made an emergency landing in Tabuk.
Israeli leaders quickly framed the episode as more than a workplace meltdown. They called it an attempted terror strike from inside the flight deck, raised radicalization concerns, and opened a multi-country questioning track. No public conviction or completed charge sheet appears in the available official statements, and investigators have not released a proven motive.
The jet carried 174 people. No passengers were seriously hurt. The pilot took stab wounds. Saudi authorities said two crew members went to the hospital with injuries that were not fully detailed in public remarks.
The New York Post reported the aircraft was a Boeing 737 Max and that 27 children were among those aboard. That account also described a steep loss of altitude, from about 33,000 feet to roughly 15,400 feet in under two minutes, before passengers and crew regained the upper hand.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the core sequence in plain terms. During the flight, as the plane approached Israel, one pilot stabbed the other and, in his words, apparently tried to crash the plane with its passengers. He later told interviewers the scene first looked “like a suicide attempt.”
On Saturday, the UAE attorney general said the attacker used the cockpit’s emergency ax on his fellow pilot. That statement put an official stamp on the weapon claim circulating after the landing.
Netanyahu, speaking on Fox News the day after the flight, also said that once subdued, the co-pilot shouted for someone to kill him. That detail came from Netanyahu’s account, not from a direct public quote by the co-pilot.
Control did not return by luck. It returned because people moved fast under pressure.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun helped end the assault inside the aircraft. Hayun put the attacker in a chokehold, dragged him from the cockpit, and joined others in restraining him with cords and zip ties. That report also said the plane plunged about 14,000 feet during the struggle before diversion to Saudi Arabia, and that Netanyahu later met the passengers praised as heroes.
Hayun’s message to the prime minister was blunt and short.
"We are a nation of lions, no? A nation like a lion."
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz credited “the bravery of several Israeli passengers” with stopping what he labeled an attempted jihadist terror attack. In public remarks carried after the landing, Katz went further on intent.
"According to the initial information in our possession, the terrorist had one intention: to crash the plane with all its passengers."
Those labels are official characterizations. They are not a court finding. The co-pilot was arrested at once, remained in custody the next day, and was moved for joint questioning.
Authorities did not immediately publish a confirmed name in the first public wave of statements. Multiple sources familiar with the investigation later told CBS News the co-pilot is Hamam al Hamami. Those sources described him as an Omani citizen. The Omani government has not publicly confirmed nationality in the material provided.
Breitbart identified the suspect as Omani national Hamam al-Hammami and reported he had been barred from flying by Oman over concerns about extremist views before FlyDubai hired him. A Gulf diplomat, speaking to that outlet’s account of the probe, said investigators were working to learn whether he acted as a “lone wolf or has any connection with any extremist groups.” UAE senior diplomatic adviser Anwar Gargash called the attack a “dangerous terrorist act.”
CBS News’s source account filled in a longer employment path. Al Hamami had been at Oman Air, first in pilot training and later in an office job after surveillance reportedly found visits to radical websites. Sources said he resigned from desk duty around 2024, moved into the Dubai aviation market, and was hired by FlyDubai without Omani government vetting. Those hiring and surveillance claims come from sources, not from a public Omani dossier released in the package.
Sources also told CBS News he posted a video of El Al planes in Dubai that ended with a photo of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al Qaeda leader killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2022. The full post text, platform handle, and timestamp were not provided in the documents.
So that claim remains source-attributed rather than independently reproduced here.
Netanyahu has pushed a radicalization narrative while keeping some external-link questions open. On Friday he said the picture was getting clearer.
"As time passes, the picture is becoming clearer; the attacker underwent Islamist radicalization. He came to crash the plane with its passengers,"
He added a second warning in the same vein: “We are investigating whether he was dispatched, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.” On Fox, he said “personal information” supported the conclusion the co-pilot “underwent Islamist radical indoctrination,” and that it was “too early to say” whether Iran was involved.
President Trump, speaking Thursday, said the co-pilot may be linked to Iran “based on what I'm hearing.” He also said, “We're working on it right now,” and that partners were “being very open with us,” while repeating that the work was ongoing.
Katz, on Wednesday, called the incident “an attempted jihadist terror attack” and referred to the co-pilot as a “terrorist.” An Israeli security official, in the CBS account, said the probe was examining a possible Sept. 11-style attack pattern and whether the attacker worked alone. None of those statements settles command responsibility, foreign direction, or lone action as proven fact.
After the Tabuk landing, the co-pilot was placed under arrest. He stayed in custody Thursday. An Israeli official confirmed Friday that he was transferred Thursday from Saudi Arabia to the UAE for questioning by Israeli, UAE, and Saudi officials. Netanyahu had said Wednesday the man was “being questioned by the Saudi authorities” and that Israeli authorities would “join the interrogation and find out what happened there exactly.”
The Washington Examiner tracked Netanyahu’s early public account that one pilot stabbed the other and tried to crash the FlyDubai plane, a version that matched the core sequence other leaders described as the investigation widened.
Public materials in this package do not list formal charges, statute citations, case numbers, or a charging jurisdiction of record. Investigators have not publicly confirmed a finished finding on dispatch, foreign direction, mental state, or a fully proven motive. Names and detailed medical updates for the captain and the hospitalized crew also remain undisclosed in the cited reporting.
What must still be established is basic and hard. Who cleared the co-pilot onto a FlyDubai flight deck bound for Israel. What evidence, beyond official assertions and source claims, shows radicalization or outside direction. Whether airline and state screening gaps left a window that passengers had to close with force.
A locked cockpit is supposed to be a last line of defense. Here, the threat was already inside that line, armed with an emergency ax, on a route into Israel. The captain’s fight to unlock the door, the passengers’ rush, and the off-duty pilots’ recovery of the jet turned a potential mass-casualty crash into an emergency landing.
That outcome does not erase the screening failure questions now hanging over prior employment flags, cross-border hiring, and how warnings move between Oman Air, FlyDubai, and the states that share intelligence on aviation threat actors. Netanyahu’s dispatch threat, Trump’s Iran comments, and Katz’s terror labeling all point to a live security case, not a closed personnel file.
For now the facts that hold are concrete. A co-pilot is in custody after an alleged midair stabbing and crash attempt. One hundred seventy-four people walked away from a flight that dropped thousands of feet. Israeli, Saudi, and UAE officials are still questioning him. The public still lacks a finished legal charge sheet and a proven chain of motive.
When travelers have to choke out a man in the flight deck to keep a jet in the sky, aviation security stops being a slogan and starts being a body count averted by seconds.
