The United Arab Emirates shared passenger and crew details, including pilots' names and nationalities, with Israel before a FlyDubai flight to Tel Aviv was targeted in an attempted hijacking, regional officials said Sunday.
The disclosure has raised questions over how the attacker managed to board the aircraft despite previous concerns about his views.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later ordered the head of the National Security Council to appoint an examiner to review “all security aspects regarding foreign civil aviation to Israel.”
The preliminary investigation has pointed to several possible security failures. Officials have said the Omani co-pilot had previously been barred from flying in Oman because of concerns about his extremist views.
It also remains unclear how an Omani citizen was allowed to serve as co-pilot on a flight carrying Israelis to Tel Aviv, given that Oman does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
The UAE, which is leading the investigation, said the co-pilot attacked the captain with a cockpit crash axe and tried to take control of the aircraft in what it described as a “terrorist attack” on Wednesday.
The plane, carrying 182 people, nearly crashed before the Indian captain managed to open the cockpit door. Passengers and other people then entered the cockpit and subdued the attacker.
No Israeli security warning
Regional officials said Emirati authorities had shared information about the passengers and crew with Israel, including their nationalities. However, Israel did not flag any passenger or crew member as a security concern, the officials said.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the investigation publicly.
Israel's Shin Bet security agency said the Transportation Ministry is responsible for checking passenger lists from foreign flights.
Transportation Minister Miri Regev said on X that security agencies were responsible for flight security and that her ministry had not received a passenger list or any warning.
Sharing passenger information is standard aviation practice. However, Dvir Rubenstien, head of aviation security at the Transportation Ministry, told Army Radio that the ministry depends largely on security checks conducted by foreign authorities and lacks the capacity to screen every passenger on every flight.
Netanyahu said Israel has long-standing agreements with foreign airlines to prevent pilots from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel from flying into the country.
Australian police said counterterrorism investigators were also examining whether the attacker had any links to Australia. Local media reported that he had travelled there on a student visa about a decade ago.
The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology said Monday that the man had been enrolled at the university but did not complete an engineering qualification.
Passengers who helped stop the attack and regain control of the plane have been praised as heroes in Israel.
Political questions emerge
As the initial relief over the passengers' actions faded, officials began questioning the security measures that allowed the incident to happen.
Opposition politicians have used the case to criticise the government ahead of elections scheduled for later this month.
Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, accused Netanyahu's government of failing to protect the country's aviation security.
“It is exactly what system collapse looks like,” Golan wrote on X, criticising Regev, a member of Netanyahu's Likud party.
Questions have also been raised about how FlyDubai, an Emirati low-cost airline operating flights between the UAE and Israel, failed to identify the Omani co-pilot as a potential security threat.
Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University in England, said background-check systems vary between countries and cross-border investigations can be difficult because of limits on information sharing.
He said stronger background checks are important but acknowledged that there are “huge limitations” on conducting them, particularly across national borders.