UAE Shared FlyDubai Crew and Passenger Data With Israel Ahead of Attack, Officials Say

TEL AVIV, Israel — UAE authorities provided Israel with a passenger and crew manifest for the FlyDubai flight before the incident, in which a pilot tried to hijack the aircraft bound for Tel Aviv and crash it, regional officials revealed Sunday. The disclosure has intensified scrutiny regarding how the assailant bypassed existing security measures.

Following the revelation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directed the National Security Council to designate an investigator to audit all security protocols governing foreign commercial flights entering Israel.

Early findings from the investigation point to significant security failures. It has been reported that the Omani co-pilot was prohibited from flying by Omani authorities due to concerns over his extremist ideology. Furthermore, questions persist as to how a citizen of Oman—an Arab state with no diplomatic ties to Israel—was cleared to pilot a plane carrying numerous Israeli nationals to Tel Aviv.

Leading the probe, the UAE stated that on Wednesday the co-pilot assaulted the captain with the aircraft’s crash axe and attempted to seize command of the diving plane, characterizing the event as a terrorist attack. The maneuver brought the flight, carrying 182 people, to the brink of disaster until the Indian captain managed to unlock the cockpit door, enabling passengers to enter and restrain the assailant.

Regional officials, speaking anonymously as they were not cleared to discuss the investigation publicly, confirmed that the UAE transmit details including nationalities for both crew and passengers. They noted that Israel did not flag any individual on the manifest.

Israel’s domestic security service, Shin Bet, stated that the Transportation Ministry holds responsibility for screening passenger manifests from foreign airlines. However, Transport Minister Miri Regev posted on X that flight security falls to security agencies, asserting her ministry received no passenger list or prior warnings.

While exchanging such manifests is standard aviation practice, Dvir Rubenstien, head of aviation security at the Transportation Ministry, told Army Radio that the ministry depends on local security screenings and lacks the capacity or tools to vet every passenger on every flight individually.

On Thursday, Netanyahu noted that Israel maintains longstanding accords with foreign carriers designed to prevent pilots from nations without diplomatic relations to Israel from flying into the country.

On Sunday, Australian police announced that counterterrorism units were examining potential links between the attacker and Australia.

The passengers who intervened to stop the assault and help regain control of the aircraft have been celebrated as heroes across Israel.

As the initial excitement over the rescue fades, officials are now raising difficult questions and exchanging accusations regarding the security errors that nearly precipitated a catastrophic disaster.

With elections approaching at the end of the month, opposition figures have leveraged these security failures to accuse Netanyahu and his allies of negligence. Minister Regev belongs to Netanyahu’s Likud party and is a close ally.

“This is exactly what system collapse looks like,” wrote Yair Golan, leader of the opposition Democrats party, on X. “A transportation minister who completely abandons our skies, and a prime minister who abandons national security.”

It also remains unexplained how FlyDubai, the low-cost Emirati carrier operating routes between Israel and the UAE, overlooked the Omani pilot as a potential security threat.

Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at England’s Coventry University and author of a book on aircraft hijackings and bombings, noted that background check systems vary by nation and that there are constraints on cross-border information sharing.

“Regarding aviation security, we obviously aim for the most robust background checks possible. However, there are significant limitations to conducting such checks generally, particularly in cross-border contexts,” he added.

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