The pilot who tried to shoot down a flight bound for Israel had been planning a 9/11-style attack to crash into the country’s main airport in Tel Aviv, a Middle Eastern official told NBC News.
NBC News said the pilot, whose name was Hamman al Hamami, told investigators on Monday that he wanted to evade Israeli defenses and crash into Ben Gurion Airport or another building. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
An Omani citizen, multiple sources at three agencies with knowledge of the investigation and a Middle Eastern diplomat told NBC News that Hammami was identified. Authorities have not officially released the identity.
He is being questioned by investigators in the United Arab Emirates, where he was on a connecting flight from Saudi Arabia, where he was diverted after a dramatic mid-air incident last week on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
The pilot attacked his fellow pilot, Captain Smit Mahchar, with a crash ax and tried to take over the plane’s flight controls, UAE authorities said on Saturday.
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NBC News gets Omani pilot Harman Hammami. NBC News gets
The airliner, which was carrying 174 passengers, mostly Israelis, plunged from a height of 14,000 feet in just 29 seconds, causing panic on board, according to aviation tracking service Flightradar24.
Mahhar, an Indian veteran pilot with 17 years of flying experience, said in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday that his fellow pilots told him to pray, which he believed was not unusual since devout Muslims pray five times a day.
Minutes later, he said he felt a blow to his head. “My vision was almost zero due to his initial blow, I was completely blurred,” he added. “The next thing I knew was that the plane was descending sharply.”
Netanyahu’s office released a video of the call.
Initially, Mahchal said he thought there was “catastrophic damage to the plane,” but as the impacts continued, he “realized that the problem was not the plane, but another person who was in the cockpit with me.”
Also in a separate call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, Mahchar said he managed to open the cockpit door on his second attempt despite the heavy attack.
“I gave it my all, walked to the door and opened it. Thankfully, people are waiting to fight back,” he said.
The focus has shifted to safety signals that were missed before the flight.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Hammami “had previously been banned from flying in Oman over concerns that he had adopted radical ideological views.”
It was unclear how citizens of Oman, an Arab country with diplomatic relations with Israel, were allowed to fly a plane carrying Israelis to Tel Aviv.
Under Israeli law, airlines must provide passenger and crew information, including names and nationalities, within 48 hours before a flight.
After the incident, Netanyahu called on the chairman of the National Security Council to appoint an examiner to review “all safety aspects” of Israeli civil aviation.
Elsewhere, Vice President JD Vance highlighted concerns about potential safety failures.
“That individual should not be flying with the airline, so we will certainly be reviewing the procedures within the United States to ensure that someone who is clearly a flight risk is not flying an aircraft,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Monday.