Flydubai co-pilot wanted to crash the plane in July

He has been in custody in Saudi Arabia since the middle of last week, when he tried to crash a Flydubai plane with around 180 Israeli passengers. In the investigations that have been ongoing since then, more and more shocking details have come to light:

It was only in February that he was accepted as a pilot for the United Arab Emirates’ low-cost airline. He then did everything he could to be put on the route between Dubai and Tel Aviv. He was fired from his previous employer, Oman Air, due to safety concerns. And he also didn’t get a job at the Moroccan flagship Royal Air Maroc because of his radical Islamic views, the reported Wall Street Journal.

The previous week, Hammami had finally tried to implement his terror plan. Shortly before Israeli airspace, he pounced on the captain and seriously injured him with an ax. But with the last of his strength he was able to open the cockpit door, which was locked from the inside, whereupon three passengers overpowered the attacker and another pilot who happened to be flying with him made an emergency landing of the plane in Saudi Arabia.

Back in July, the terrorist wanted to crash a plane on the flight to Tel Aviv, people familiar with the investigation now report. But a crew member was close to his heart at the time, and so he changed his plans.

The initial relief in Israel over the heroism of the passengers and the seriously injured pilot has since given way to concerns about safety lapses that allowed Hammami to sit in the cockpit in the first place and almost caused the plane to crash.

Flydubai did not vet Hammami with his previous employer and only conducted a criminal record check before hiring him. Israel, in turn, received a list of passengers and crew members of the Flydubai flight in advance, but did not remove Hammami from the list. Israel typically excludes pilots from any country with which it does not have diplomatic relations, such as Oman.

There were apparently major gaps on the Israeli side in this regulation in particular: more than 1,200 crew members from banned countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Oman have flown to Israel since the beginning of the year, a person familiar with the matter tells the Wall Street Journal.