The co-pilot who attacked the captain of a flydubai jet last week had planned to crash the plane into Tel Aviv’s international airport, the United Arab Emirates’ top prosecutor said on Friday. In the aftermath of the incident, people on board — the majority of whom were Israeli — described a sudden plunge in altitude and a fight for control of the aircraft, which was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. The passengers were repatriated on a second flydubai flight hours later. The unnamed Omani co-pilot, now in custody in the UAE, had drawn inspiration from Al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 suicide attacks on the United States, and carried out his attempt “with the aim of causing the greatest possible loss of life”, according to the Emirati prosecutor’s findings published by state media. The prosecutor found that the co-pilot had first begun to be radicalised while studying in Australia “through reading extremist literature and following online content”.
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