Marrakech – Royal Air Maroc (RAM) has moved to correct media reports linking the copilot behind the Flydubai midair attack to the national carrier.
In a statement, the airline confirmed that the man completed a three-month theoretical training course at Royal Air Maroc in 2025, a preliminary step toward possible employment. His candidacy was rejected at the end of that period.
The clarification counters accounts that described a longer association with the Moroccan flag carrier. A LinkedIn profile bearing the copilot’s name, cited by CNN, had listed him as joining Royal Air Maroc in June 2025 and leaving in January 2026. Royal Air Maroc frames the relationship as training alone, not employment.
That thread feeds into a wider investigation now led by Abu Dhabi, where prosecutors are examining what United Arab Emirates authorities have called an attempted “terrorist attack.”
UAE Attorney General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi told state media that the copilot attacked the captain inside the cockpit with the aircraft’s emergency crash axe and tried to take over the controls.
The attack unfolded on Wednesday aboard Flight FZ1073, which left Dubai for Tel Aviv carrying 174 people, most of them Israeli. About two and a half hours into the flight, over Saudi airspace, the Boeing 737 made a sharp turn and plunged. Flight-tracking data reviewed by Al Jazeera showed the plane dropping more than 17,000 feet in roughly two minutes before stabilizing.
Inside the cockpit, the copilot had wounded the captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, with the crash axe, a tool normally kept on board to cut through the aircraft in emergencies.
Machchhar, lying injured on the floor, reached the door and unlocked it. “When I was down, I could feel that the aircraft was plummeting, and I knew this is the last chance to do something,” he told Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi from a hospital in Abu Dhabi. He described telling himself to give “one last push” to open the door from inside.
That opening let passengers and crew into the cockpit. Tali Manes, an Israeli passenger, had first raised the alarm after hearing heavy blows against the door and shouting that someone was being stabbed. Her husband Tzvika and three other men rushed in.
Hayun, 50, a plumber who owns a sewage pumping company, was traveling with his wife and two daughters, and has since been widely hailed in Israel as a hero. “We knew there was an attack because a woman screamed ‘stabbing’ and the plane shook,” he recounted. “At that moment I ran to the cockpit, and the plane dived.”
Hayun found one pilot down and the copilot trying to destroy the instruments to disable the aircraft. He grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and pulled him out with help from another passenger.
Hayun then briefly returned to the controls, his shirt bloodstained, and pulled up the unmanned steering column to level the plane. Asked by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how he knew what to do, he gave a plain answer: “I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr Prime Minister,” explaining he steadied the plane using a technique he recalled from a television show about air crashes. Tzvika described tying the copilot up with airline earphone cables.
Control then passed to two off-duty pilots on board, including one identified by passengers as a British man named James. It was he who guided the jet to a landing in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia. Both pilots were hospitalized before being transferred to Abu Dhabi. The transponder had been switched to code 7500, signaling unlawful interference, after an earlier general emergency alert.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog nominated Hayun for the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism, along with the Maneses, Dr. Shota Musayev, who treated the wounded captain, and Asaf Rajuan. “I’m not a hero,” Rajuan told reporters at the airport. “You don’t think, you just act.”
The copilot’s identity has not been officially confirmed. Multiple outlets, including Reuters and CNN, have named him as Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national born in the UAE to a Syrian mother.
US media reported that Oman Air had removed him from flight training over concerns about radical views and reassigned him, and that Omani authorities later barred him from flying in the country. Buckinghamshire New University in the UK confirmed he completed a distance-learning course in aviation management, graduating in 2023, but took no pilot training there.
Netanyahu told Fox News that the copilot had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination” and appeared suicidal, recounting that the man called out “Kill me, kill me” after passengers subdued him. The suspect discussed killing Jews on social media, Netanyahu’s spokesperson told NBC News. Israeli security officials believe he likely acted alone.
The UAE holds jurisdiction because the aircraft is registered there and flies under its flag. Israel is expected to join the investigation, and Saudi Arabia conducted the preliminary probe alongside Emirati teams.
President Donald Trump warned of renewed strikes on Iran if it were found responsible, though a senior US official told NBC News there are no indications of Iranian involvement. Flydubai has suspended its flights to Israel while the inquiry continues.
