UAE Shared Crew Details; Israel Didn’t Flag the Attacker

There is a particular kind of failure that becomes visible only in retrospect—a failure made of information that was shared, warnings that were issued, and red flags that were not raised. In the days since a FlyDubai co-pilot attacked his captain with a crash axe mid-flight, attempting to seize control of a plane bound for Tel Aviv, investigators have begun to piece together not only what happened in the cockpit but what happened in the systems meant to prevent it. On Sunday, regional officials told the Associated Press that authorities in the United Arab Emirates had shared a list of passengers and crew with Israel before the flight departed, including the pilots’ names and nationalities. Israel, according to those officials, did not flag any of them.

The disclosure raises a question that has haunted aviation security since the September 30 attack: how did a man described by his own government as a security risk, barred from flying in Oman because of extremist views, end up at the controls of a commercial airliner carrying 174 people toward Israel? The co-pilot, an Omani national identified only by the initials H.A.H., had worked at Oman Air for roughly seven years before being removed from flight training and reassigned to other duties due to concerns about his radical views. He left Oman Air in February 2025, joined Royal Air Maroc in June 2025, and left in January 2026. He had been at FlyDubai for about eight months.

The UAE, which is leading the investigation, has confirmed that the co-pilot “initiated the execution of a terrorist act” by attacking the captain with the cockpit’s crash axe and attempting to take control of the aircraft. The captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, managed to open the cockpit door despite his wounds, allowing passengers and crew to subdue the attacker. The plane landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

What remains unclear is where the security chain broke. The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, said the Transportation Ministry is responsible for vetting passenger lists from foreign flights. Transportation Minister Miri Regev told Israel’s public broadcaster Kan that the security agencies are responsible for flight security and that her ministry was not 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 do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel—a category that includes Oman.

Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University, told the AP that background check systems differ from country to country and there are inherent limits on what information can be shared across borders. “In terms of aviation security itself, obviously we want to have as robust background checks as possible,” he said. “But there are huge limitations on doing background checks in any case, especially in cross-border checks.” The investigation continues in Abu Dhabi, where the co-pilot is being interrogated. The final results, UAE prosecutors said, will be announced once all procedures are complete. For the passengers who survived, and for the systems that failed to stop the attack before it began, the questions are only starting to be asked.

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Sources: Associated Press, CNN, The Independent, RTVE, RTBF, Xinhua