Suspected terror pilot’s LinkedIn post – hours after the incident

 

Emil Forsberg

 

Published 2026-10-03 23:15 | Updated 2026-10-03 23:38

Hammam al-Hammami, 29, is suspected of stabbing the captain and attempting to crash the plane with 174 passengers on board.

Hours later, a radical post appeared on his LinkedIn account.

Then, everything was deleted.

An investigation into the 29-year-old Omani national Hammam al-Hammami is underway following the terrifying flight between Dubai and Tel Aviv.

According to the UAE Minister of Justice, he attacked his fellow pilot with an emergency axe and attempted to seize control of the plane before being stopped.

It is not known how al-Hammami was assigned to this sensitive route. Under the Abraham Accords, pilots from countries classified as enemies of Israel are prohibited from flying to and from the country.

Oman had also issued a flight ban for al-Hammami due to concerns that he had developed radical Islamist views, the Wall Street Journal reports.

He was a trainee at Oman Air for several years before being suspended in 2024 after being identified as a security risk, according to senior intelligence sources who spoke to ABC News. He had been caught in possession of "extremist material" and had visited radical Islamist websites.

Hammam al-Hammami, 29, is suspected of stabbing the captain and attempting to crash the plane with 174 passengers on board. 

The new posts

According to sources, al-Hammami spent a significant amount of time in Syria, where his mother lives.

Nine hours after the thwarted attack—which Israeli authorities say could have resulted in another 9/11-style event—two posts appeared on the 29-year-old’s LinkedIn account, *The Telegraph* reports.

One of the posts featured an Israeli aircraft, a suicide bomber, and Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took command of the terrorist group following Osama bin Laden's death.

The posts were subsequently deleted. It remains unclear whether they had been scheduled in advance or how exactly they were published.

"Suddenly, everyone agreed"

In deleted posts on X, he also described the difficulties he faced in finding a wife willing to accept his demands that she wear a niqab and stop working after marriage.

"Everyone refused. Then my mother told them, 'My son is a pilot,' and suddenly everyone agreed," read a post from February 2022.

According to *The Telegraph*, he completed a three-year distance-learning course in air traffic management at Buckinghamshire New University, graduating in 2023. The university stated that he did not undergo his pilot training there.

Israeli officials told CNN that al-Hammami had worked for Flydubai for only eight months. Prior to that, he had completed a three-month internship with Royal Air Maroc. These revelations are expected to raise concerns regarding background check procedures for employment in the aviation industry, CNN reports.