Israel says foreign pilots are vetted by airlines, not independently by its Transportation Ministry.
The disclosure follows the alleged cockpit attack on Flydubai Flight FZ1073 involving Captain Smit Machchhar and his Omani co-pilot.
The case has raised questions over foreign-pilot vetting and restrictions on crews from countries without diplomatic ties to Israel.
The cockpit of a passenger aircraft is supposed to be one of the most controlled spaces in commercial aviation. Yet after an Omani co-pilot allegedly attacked the Indian captain of a Flydubai flight bound for Tel Aviv, a more uncomfortable question has surfaced in Israel: who checks the people sitting behind the controls of foreign airlines?
Israel’s Transportation Ministry said on Saturday that it does not conduct background checks on foreign pilots flying into the country and cannot guarantee that flights operated by foreign airlines will be completely safe.
The ministry’s security division said it does not receive the names of pilots and crew members in advance and does not have personnel abroad to carry out individual checks, according to The Times of Israel.
The Questions Behind The Flydubai Attack
The admission came days after Flydubai Flight FZ1073, travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv, was thrown into an emergency when its Omani co-pilot allegedly attacked Captain Smit Machchhar in the cockpit.
Machchhar was seriously injured but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to intervene. The aircraft eventually made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
The incident has since opened a new line of scrutiny over how foreign airline crews are vetted before operating flights to Israel. The Transportation Ministry said its security division is not an intelligence agency and relies on airlines to conduct background checks in accordance with international regulations. “Nothing is 100% when it comes to security,” a ministry representative said, according to Israeli media.
Transportation Minister Miri Regev said the responsibility for determining the threat level and whether passengers can travel to particular destinations lies with Israel’s security establishment. The comments came as questions mounted over whether Israeli authorities had sufficient information about the crew operating the Flydubai flight.
A Security Gap Exposed
The controversy is now moving beyond the question of what happened inside the Flydubai cockpit to the system that allowed the crew to reach it in the first place.
The Omani co-pilot, identified as Hamam al-Hammami, is at the centre of investigations by authorities in the UAE, Israel and elsewhere. Questions have also emerged over his previous employment history and whether warning signs about his views or background had been identified before he joined Flydubai. Authorities have not publicly established a wider organisational link to the attack, AP News reported.
For Israel, the episode has exposed an uncomfortable division of responsibility: the airline screens its crews, while the state assesses broader security threats. After a cockpit attack brought a passenger aircraft within moments of catastrophe, the question now is whether that division is enough.
