The captain of the Flydubai jet involved in Wednesday’s attempted hijacking said his co-pilot asked to pray before attacking him from behind with a cockpit crash axe. New evidence has also pointed to the suspect’s apparent interest in al-Qaeda, while pro-al-Qaeda propaganda has praised the incident and urged further attacks on aircraft carrying Americans and Israelis.

Captain Smit Machchhar, who suffered serious injuries during the attack aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, provided his fullest account of the ordeal Saturday during a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It was a normal flight,” Machchhar said. He recalled that his co-pilot, 29-year-old Omani national Hamam al-Hammami, told him he wanted to pray.

Machchhar said the request initially seemed routine. Out of respect, he turned to face forward.

“Suddenly, after four or five minutes, there was a big blow to the back of my head,” he said.

“My first thought was that there was catastrophic damage to the aircraft,” Machchhar said. “But after that, the blows kept coming, one after the other. That’s when I realized it’s not the aircraft, it’s the other guy who was in the cockpit with me.”

The United Arab Emirates’ attorney general said Saturday that Hammami had taken the Boeing 737 MAX’s cockpit crash axe, an emergency tool carried on commercial aircraft, and used it to attack Machchhar before trying to take control of the plane. Emirati authorities have formally classified the incident as an attempted “terrorist attack.”

Seriously injured and struggling to see after repeated blows to his head, Machchhar said he then felt the aircraft “sharply going down.”

He first tried to open the cockpit door, but Hammami blocked him and also prevented crew members outside from entering with the access code. Lying on the cockpit floor while hearing screams from the cabin, Machchhar said he gathered enough strength for one final attempt.

“I had one last fight left in me,” he said. “If I don’t do it, I’m going to die.”

Machchhar charged toward the door and succeeded in opening it.

“People were waiting to pounce back, and take control, and the rest is what you know, sir,” he told Netanyahu.

Israeli passengers rushed into the cockpit. Passenger Yaniv Hayun seized Hammami by the neck and pulled him away from the controls while others restrained him. Hayun briefly helped steady the aircraft before off-duty pilots on board assumed control and eventually landed the heavily damaged jet safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

As investigators work to establish exactly what happened in the cockpit, fresh evidence has emerged regarding Hammami’s apparent affinity for al-Qaeda.

CNN reported Saturday that social media accounts using Hammami’s name shared footage of Israeli aircraft alongside images of senior al-Qaeda figures.

One video, partly filmed from the cockpit of a Boeing 737 MAX at Dubai International Airport, focused on an El Al aircraft before cutting to images of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the former al-Qaeda leader who succeeded Osama bin Laden, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi. Al-Balawi was an al-Qaeda loyalist whose 2009 suicide bombing in Afghanistan killed seven CIA personnel and two other people.

The video appeared on Hammami’s LinkedIn account about nine hours after Wednesday’s attack, at a time when he was already in custody. CNN said it could not establish who uploaded the material or whether it had been scheduled beforehand. The same videos reportedly appeared at roughly the same time on an Instagram account bearing his name, which was later deleted.

The Telegraph separately reported that a social media account strongly linked to Hammami contained more than 2,000 posts dating from 2021 and 2022. The posts reportedly included repeated support for violence against women, harsh religious punishments and other extremist rhetoric.

The revelations come as pro-al-Qaeda propaganda openly celebrates the Flydubai attack and calls for additional assaults on aircraft carrying Americans and Israelis.

The latest edition of Al-Bayan, a weekly publication produced by the pro-al-Qaeda media outlet Al-Yaqin, reportedly featured the attempted hijacking on its front page under the headline “Between 11 September and 30 September.” The wording explicitly linked Wednesday’s incident to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The war isn’t over yet — planes carrying Zionists, Americans and all the other infidels fighting against Islam are still hovering in the skies and can be targeted, as happened on September 11th and 30th,” the publication stated, according to the New York Post.

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The article reportedly paired an image of an aircraft striking the World Trade Center with imagery from the Flydubai attack.

Despite the al-Qaeda imagery found on accounts bearing Hammami’s name and the subsequent propaganda celebrating the attack, investigators have so far established no operational connection between Hammami and al-Qaeda or any other terrorist organization. The UAE investigation is examining his motives, planning, and any possible outside links.

UAE presidential adviser Anwar Gargash warned Saturday that the attack underscored a broader continuing threat from extremism.

“The region’s struggle with extremism persists, and justifying terrorism through hate speech is part of the danger, not its margins,” Gargash said. “The latest terrorist operation is a new warning that the confrontation has not ended.”

The expanding investigation is also raising increasingly serious questions about how Hammami was able to return to a commercial cockpit after authorities in Oman had already identified him as a security concern.

Hammami had previously been barred from flying by Oman Air after concerns arose over his extremist views. CBS News reported Saturday that Omani authorities had monitored him and discovered that he was visiting extremist websites, prompting the airline to move him from flying duties into an administrative role.

Hammami eventually left Oman Air and later joined Flydubai, which hired him without conducting a background check with the Omani government, sources told the outlet.

Royal Air Maroc, where Hammami’s since-deleted LinkedIn profile claimed he subsequently worked, has said he underwent three months of theoretical pre-employment training in 2025 but was not ultimately selected for employment.

Hammami nevertheless went on to fly for Flydubai and had operated the Dubai-Tel Aviv route several times before Wednesday’s attack, according to Israel’s Channel 12.

The network further reported that Flydubai provided Israeli authorities with the names of the crew, including Hammami, before Wednesday’s flight, but his name triggered no warning. Israeli authorities were unaware that Oman had previously barred him from flying over extremist concerns.

Israeli security officials described the lapse as a “colossal security screw-up,” saying Hammami had been planning the attack for some time while Israel had “not a scrap of information on him.”

The revelation has prompted Israeli and foreign authorities to examine whether other pilots from hostile states have been flying foreign carriers into and out of Ben Gurion Airport. Pilots from Iran, Syria, Iraq and other hostile countries have done so in recent years, sometimes using second passports, according to the network.

The revelations have also exposed confusion over which Israeli agency is responsible for vetting foreign flight crews. The Tax Authority said Israel receives complete passenger and crew manifests before departure, while the Transportation Ministry said it does not receive pilots’ names in advance for background checks and stressed that it is “not an intelligence body.”

The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has pointed to the Transportation Ministry as responsible for security involving foreign airlines, while Transportation Minister Miri Regev has said determining security threats is the responsibility of Israel’s security establishment.

Israeli investigators, meanwhile, had still not been given direct access to Hammami as of Saturday and were relying on information supplied by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, according to the network.

Hammami, who remains in UAE custody, is cooperating with investigators and has indicated that he intended to crash the aircraft in Israel, ABC News reported, citing sources briefed on the investigation. Authorities are still working to determine whether he acted alone or had outside assistance.

Netanyahu has said Hammami underwent “Islamist radical indoctrination” and intended to crash the aircraft with everyone aboard.

“He intended to crash the plane with all its passengers on board,” Netanyahu said this week. “We are now investigating whether he was sent, and whoever sent him will pay a very heavy price.”

For Machchhar, however, the difference between catastrophe and survival came down to his final effort to open the cockpit door.

“You are a hero of Israel, you are a hero of India, and you are a hero of the entire world,” Netanyahu told the wounded captain Saturday.