Emirati authorities shared with Israel information about passengers and crew before a FlyDubai cockpit attacker was subdued during an Israel-bound flight with 182 people aboard.
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Authorities in the United Arab Emirates shared with Israel a list of passengers and crew ahead of a FlyDubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, regional officials said Sunday, as investigations continue into a pilot attempt to seize control of the aircraft and crash it.
Officials said the Emirati co-pilot, later identified in Israel as an Omani citizen, had been barred from flying by his own country because of concerns about his extremist views. Regional officials also said it remained unclear how an Omani citizen—an Arab country without diplomatic relations with Israel—was allowed to fly a planeload of Israelis to Tel Aviv.
The United Arab Emirates is leading the investigation. Officials said the co-pilot attacked the flight’s captain with the cockpit’s crash ax and tried to take control of the plummeting aircraft in a “terrorist attack” Wednesday.
Officials said the attacker’s actions nearly crashed the flight with 182 people on board before the Indian captain was able to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and others to rush in and subdue the attacker.
The regional officials said Emirati authorities had shared information about passengers and crew, including their nationalities, and that Israel hadn’t raised red flags on any passenger or member of the crew.
Israel’s Shin Bet said the Transportation Ministry is responsible for vetting passenger lists from foreign flights, and Transportation Minister Miri Regev told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan that her ministry wasn’t given a list of passengers or any warnings.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has long-standing agreements with foreign carriers to keep pilots from flying into the country if they are citizens of nations that don’t maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
It also remains unclear how FlyDubai, a low-cost Emirati airline that operates flights between Israel and the UAE, failed to identify the Omani pilot as a security risk.
Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University in England who wrote a book about aircraft hijackings and bombings, said background check systems vary by country and that there are limits on what types of information can be shared. “In terms of aviation security itself, obviously we want to have as robust background checks as possible. But there are huge limitations on doing background checks in any case, especially in cross-border checks,” he said.
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