New details in the investigation into flight FZ1073 are raising a question every traveler will want answered. The flydubai co-pilot accused of attacking his captain and trying to crash the plane had reportedly been flagged as a security risk at another airline two years earlier, yet he still ended up in the cockpit of a flight bound for Israel.
Senior intelligence and law enforcement officials told ABC News that the suspect, a 29-year-old Omani national, was suspended from flying by Oman Air in 2024 while he was a co-pilot trainee. He had been found with extremist materials, the officials said, though he was allowed to keep working at the airline in an administrative role.
Investigators are now trying to determine how he was later hired by flydubai and allowed to fly as first officer.
What Investigators Have Said
According to sources who spoke to ABC News, the suspect has been moved from Saudi Arabia to the UAE and is cooperating with investigators. He has indicated that he intended to crash the plane in Israel, those sources said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the suspect underwent "Islamist radicalization." Anwar Gargash, a senior adviser to the UAE's president, called the attack a "dangerous terrorist act" on Friday. He's the first senior Emirati official to publicly describe it as terrorism.
The captain, Smit Machchhar, survived the attack and later told India's prime minister that he had been "fighting for my life."
How Airlines Check Pilots
Most travelers assume that anyone flying their plane has been thoroughly checked, and in many ways they have. Commercial pilots need licenses issued by national aviation regulators, and airlines review their flying experience, training records and references before hiring them. Pilots also go through security background checks to get the badges that let them into restricted parts of the airport.
Gaps can appear when a pilot moves between airlines in different countries. There's no single global database that tracks pilots flagged for security concerns, and what one airline can share about a former employee often depends on local privacy and employment laws. A red flag at one airline doesn't automatically follow a pilot to the next one, especially across borders.
Questions for Flydubai
It isn't yet clear what flydubai knew about the suspect's history when it hired him, or whether Oman Air's concerns were ever passed along. Those are likely to be central questions as the investigation continues, and the answers could shape how airlines in the region share information about pilots in the future.
After the 2015 Germanwings crash, when a co-pilot deliberately flew a plane into the French Alps, European regulators tightened how airlines assess and support pilots. This case could prompt a similar rethink of security screening, particularly on politically sensitive routes.
Crew members and passengers stopped the attack before it could succeed, and all 174 passengers on board survived.
