Airline captain keen on Palestinian martyrdom

Terrorism in the 20th century saw the rise of the commercial aircraft as a preferred tool in waging revolutionary war. It was only in September 2001 that commercial aircraft became missiles with human payloads. As a result, all commercial craft are fitted with security doors to prevent terrorists from accessing the cabin.

But what happens when a member of the cabin crew becomes the potential terrorist? This is a question that deserves to be asked of Royal Jordanian after one of its senior pilots professed a willingness to die in the service of a higher calling.

Captain Yousef Al-Hamlan Dajah declared he was “willing to be martyred for the sake of Palestine”. He didn’t say this in some small madrassa in the suburbs of Amman but in New York. He said he was compelled to speak out after being outraged by President Donald Trump’s announcement that the US would recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

According to a recording obtained by the Middle East Media Research Institute, he told a New York-based Arab-language media outlet “every mother, father and teacher should raise a new generation that will liberate Palestine”.

This was less than a week after telling passengers on flight RJ 261 from Amman to New York that “we are about to fly over Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine”. The recording has gone viral on YouTube and is a sensation on Arab social media.

Some passengers were understandably alarmed. You would expect Royal Jordanian, a respected airline and a member of the Oneworld Alliance (which includes Qantas), would immediately disavow his comments and stand him down pending an investigation. You would expect Qantas to issue a “please explain”.

As far as we know, Dajah is still flying. My request for clarification, posted on the airline’s website this week, remains unanswered.

The concern is that if Dajah truly believes that becoming a martyr for Palestinian rights is the appropriate course of action, who’s to say he won’t decide to pilot his plane into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem or the Dizengoff Centre, one of Israel’s most famous shopping precincts in the heart of Tel Aviv?

Dajah is believed to be in fine mental health with no financial worries, unlike 27 year-old Andreas Lubitz, a junior pilot with Lufthansa subsidiary Germanwings, who had been severely depressed when he locked his captain out of the cockpit before sending an Airbus A320 into the mountainside at Digne-les-Bains, France, in March 2015, killing all 150 aboard.

Was the statement by Dajah just an empty threat by an angry Muslim to inspire other Muslims to take to the streets to share his outrage? Or is it the precursor of something more sinister?

I’ve flown Royal Jordanian and found it to be excellent. But I will not fly with the airline while management refuses to calm my frayed nerves. All it would take to reassure me is confirmation that Dajah is no longer in the cockpit or has been restricted to flight RJ 814, that short 90-minute hop from Amman to Baghdad.

Michael Krape is a Melbourne-based writer.