ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – The UAE attorney general on Friday announced that the co-pilot of Flydubai’s recent hijacking attempt aimed to crash the airplane into Israel’s Ben Gurion passenger terminal. 

The co-pilot, an Omani national, aimed “to seize control of Flydubai flight FZ1073 and use it in a suicide attack targeting Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv,” Hamad Saif al-Shamsi said in a statement posted by his office.

The incident occurred in late September, when the flight’s co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain and attempted to take control of the aircraft, prompting passengers and crew to intervene. The plane was diverted and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

The statement said that the suspect had “confessed in detail to the incident, his motives, and the stages of planning and execution,” adding that he had adopted “terrorist ideologies since 2017,” and took inspiration from the September 11 attacks on the US.

Shamsi said earlier in October that the co-pilot had attacked the captain with a crash axe in an attempt to take control of the plane.

According to Flightradar24, the plane lost around 17,000 feet of altitude in the span of a minute. Operator flydubai said at the time of the incident that all 174 passengers, including 166 Israelis, were safe.

Shamsi said on Friday that the suspect had flown to Tel Aviv twice previously “to scout the flight path and the airport as part of his personal preparation for his terrorist plot.”