JERUSALEM — The co-pilot who tried to crash a FlyDubai passenger jet on Wednesday was “suicidal” and “underwent Islamic radical indoctrination,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday during an appearance on Fox News, providing the first indication of a motive for the attack.
The co-pilot, who has been identified only as an Omani national, was “radicalized,” Doron Spielman, a spokesman for Netanyahu, told The Washington Post.
“He talks on his social media about killing Jews,” Spielman said. “So it’s very clear he had the intent and the motive to kill Jews before.”
The harrowing midair drama on Flight 1073 to Tel Aviv, as retold by passenger witnesses and Netanyahu, sounded almost unbelievable: The co-pilot stabbed the captain in the cockpit, then sent the plane into a nosedive before passengers subdued him and backup pilots landed safely in Saudi Arabia.
With passengers’ lives spared and the pilot and alleged attacker hospitalized, investigators in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel were trying to piece together Thursday how — in the post-9/11 era of tightened security — such an attack could have happened and whether others might have been involved.
Several lapses were already in focus.
The co-pilot should not have been allowed to fly to Tel Aviv under Israeli protocols that prohibit citizens from countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Israel to land in Tel Aviv. Oman has not normalized relations with Israel.
It was also not clear how the co-pilot brought a weapon on board — or whether he did. Videos of the aftermath of Wednesday’s attack, circulating online, showed the pilot on the floor bleeding, and passengers said he had been stabbed. Netanyahu, in an interview with CBS News, said the suspect used “an ax.”
While Saudi and Emirati investigators have yet to confirm many details from the incident, the initial accounts point to significant security breaches. Flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv have flourished in the five years since the United Arab Emirates and Israel normalized relations in 2020, analysts say. FlyDubai, owned by the Emirati government, flies 10 round trips a day.
Following a directive from Netanyahu’s office, the airline suspended its flights Wednesday until the investigation is complete, the Israeli Transportation Ministry said.
Investigators, meanwhile, zeroed in on the key questions.
“It’s right now at the center of the investigation of the joint team of Omani security services and Mossad: How is it possible for a guy of this nationality to fly the aircraft?” said Oded Ailam, a former head of counterterrorism at Mossad, the Israeli external intelligence agency, and now a fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. “One of the theories is that he had two passports, but that has to be answered in order to eliminate further incidents.”
Spielman, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said there appeared to be “a number of loopholes” that enabled the attack.
“One loophole is that he was on the plane as a pilot, since we don’t have diplomatic relations,” Spielman said, adding there was also the question of the weapon.
“Most of the aircraft security measures that have been put in place are for terrorists outside of the cockpit, not terrorists inside the cockpit,” he said.
On Thursday, Israeli media reported that the suspect may have used an emergency ax that was already in the cockpit to carry out the attack.
Ailam said that the weapon needed to be investigated but noted that passengers, pilots and other aircraft crew typically undergo the same level of checks at airport security.
So far, Israeli officials have refrained from criticizing potential screening failures, either in FlyDubai’s hiring process or at the terminal in Dubai International Airport. Instead, they have sounded appreciative.
In television interviews Wednesday, Netanyahu highlighted the fact that up to 1 million Israelis have traveled to Dubai, and he praised the UAE and its carrier for keeping flights running even after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas — which led many major airlines to pause flights.
Netanyahu said UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan invited Israel to join the Emirati investigation once the suspect is transferred to the Emirates. The Omani suspect is being held and interrogated by Saudi authorities. It’s not clear when he will be transferred.
The official Emirates News Agency reported Thursday that the country’s attorney general, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, had opened an investigation into whether the attack had a terrorist motive or prior planning.
At this stage, Israeli investigators “cannot say with certainty whether he acted alone or was part of a broader cell,” an Israeli security official told The Post.
Tzvika Manes, who was sitting in the first row of business class with his family on the flight, intervened when he heard his wife, who was waiting for the bathroom outside the cockpit, scream: “They’re stabbing the pilot! They’re stabbing the pilot!’”
The co-pilot was the lone assailant, Manes said. The cockpit door was open, apparently because the wounded captain, identified as an Indian citizen, Smit Machchhar, had managed to release it despite his injuries, said Manes, who is the head of underwriting at Israel’s Bank Leumi.
Under normal conditions, the cockpit door on the plane, a Boeing 737 Max 8, uses a dead bolt that can be locked from the cockpit side, according to a 2025 Boeing manual for flight attendants.
Manes said a FlyDubai pilot who was outside the cockpit and unaware of what was happening rushed in along with Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber. Hayun placed the attacker in a choke hold, according to Manes and an account Hayun gave to Netanyahu during a televised meeting at Ben Gurion Airport after his return to Tel Aviv.
Manes said he and another passenger, Asaf Rajuan, restrained the suspect, while a dentist, Shota Musaev, arrived to treat the wounded pilot. “In that moment, all you think is survival,” Manes said.
Geopolitical fault lines
After the attempted hijacking raised alarm across the Middle East, many commentators, officials and political leaders seized upon the incident in ways that highlighted the region’s political fault lines.
One Israeli official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation, said his country saw the attack not just as against Israel, but also against its relationship with the UAE. The two countries normalized ties in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords.
“Israelis and Emiratis will continue to stand together,” said the Israeli official, adding that Israel “trusts completely” the Emiratis and their investigation. “Those who try to harm the relationship and the normalization will not set the future of the region.”
Israel’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, with which Netanyahu has been unsuccessfully seeking diplomatic normalization, appeared less warm. After the FlyDubai plane made its emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, its passengers were repatriated by alternate FlyDubai aircraft from Dubai, not Israeli planes arriving from Israel. In public appearances, Netanyahu sidestepped questions about whether Israel would investigate the incident alongside Riyadh officials.
Meanwhile, some pro-Israel commentators seized on the nationality of the suspect to claim that Oman — a mediator in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran — was allowing its citizens to be radicalized.
When asked about Oman during an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Netanyahu took a light jab at the country’s leadership. “I’m sure that, had the late Sultan of Oman, Qaboos, lived, we would have had another partner in the Abraham Accords,” Netanyahu said. “The new regime is standoffish, so I can’t say anything about them yet.”
Marc Sievers, a former U.S. ambassador to Oman and head of the American Jewish Committee in Abu Dhabi, disputed the characterization, saying Oman “does not have a history of extremism.”
“During the height of al-Qaeda and the Islamic states, when there were tens of thousands of young people from all over — including Europe and America — who volunteered, there were very few, if any, Omanis who went,” he said, adding that there were also no Omanis among the hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001.
The narrowly averted disaster Wednesday was highly politicized in Israel, just weeks before pivotal elections. Netanyahu’s supporters pointed out that he had issued a video address from an air base the day before the attempted hijacking warning of an imminent attack on Israel. It was proof, they said, that the veteran leader lived up to his “Mr. Security” moniker and had a nose for anticipating danger.
After he held a widely publicized meeting with the flight’s passengers Wednesday evening, Netanyahu did interviews on multiple American television networks.
Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader, said he had been briefed by Netanyahu on Tuesday night but that Netanyahu did not mention anything or even hint at a potential hijacking plot.
“All the spin that [Netanyahu’s] megaphones are doing now only proves what was already clear yesterday — that they’re once again trying to do cheap politics at the expense of Israel’s security,” Lapid said on X.
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