New details reveal just how premeditated the flydubai first officer's terror plot against Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport really was, and how close it came to succeeding.
Horrible. Thank goodness he was stopped by the brave passengers and other crew. It seems we need better, global standards so that airlines and countries actually share details of known security risks. If Flydubai, Emirati, and/or Israeli authorities were actually aware, then the first officer should never have been flying, especially not that route. That would be a huge lapse. And, if none of them were aware, then that's even more a reason for improving the standards; clearly, Oman knew.
The more I hear about the incident the more I don't want to travel Middle Eastern airlines. Flydubai really dropped the security ball on this one.
I wonder if the Department of Transportation will take some action against all the Middle Eastern airlines that fly to US right now. If they can have pilots that want to do that to Tel Aviv, they sure might have some pilots that want to harm our country.
But according to the “leading news organizations” it was simply an “altercation/dispute between pilots” that led to a diversion.
@ MIA Flyer -- You mean in the hours after the incident? Right, there weren't full details yet, it takes time for that information to come out. Would you like them to immediately call something a terrorist attack, when details aren't yet known?
Was it the pilot or was it Mossad?
@Ben - You say that "airlines should have some sort of a (shared) database for pilots who reach that threshold of 'concern'". This is a very dangerous slope when one (mis)perception can suddenly result in a global ban.
Imagine if Egypt had a global database of influencers they found to be of 'concern' and every other country followed that just because. I guess we wouldn't even be reading this article today.
By all means, there was a vetting process that didn't work in this particular case obviously. The solution to that is better vetting, not a big brother global database of anyone considered suspicious.
@ Sean M. -- Fair, I get your point! But the intention would simply be to share information, rather than to create a global "no fly list" of pilots who can't be hired anywhere. The idea is to at least give airlines the options to look more into people who were found to be problematic elsewhere.
And hey, if Egypt wants to tell other countries I share my opinions online about airports, I would ultimately be fine with that. But yeah, I also understand how that could make it easy to misrepresent details to serve particular agendas.