TEL AVIV, Israel – The United Arab Emirates shared passenger and crew information from FlyDubai Flight FZ1073 with Israeli authorities before the flight, according to regional officials cited by The Associated Press, adding a new question to the investigation into the Sept. 30 cockpit attack.
The officials said the information included the nationalities of passengers and crew and, according to AP’s reporting, the pilots’ names. They said Israel did not raise a security concern about any passenger or crew member before the flight.
The disclosure has not established which Israeli agency received, reviewed or was responsible for acting on the information.
That distinction is now central to the security review following the attack, in which an Omani co-pilot allegedly assaulted the Indian captain and attempted to take control of the aircraft. Israeli authorities have treated the incident as a terrorist attack, while the UAE investigation remains ongoing.
Information was reportedly shared before departure
Regional officials familiar with the investigation told AP that Emirati authorities provided Israel with information about the flight’s passengers and crew before departure.
The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. Their account does not by itself establish that every Israeli security agency received the information or that the names of the pilots were individually reviewed by an Israeli security officer.
That distinction matters because Israeli authorities have provided conflicting accounts of how passenger and crew information is handled.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, said the Transportation Ministry is responsible for vetting passenger lists from foreign flights. Transportation Minister Miri Regev, however, said security agencies are responsible for flight security and that her ministry did not receive a passenger list or warning concerning the flight.
Israeli agencies dispute responsibility
The dispute concerns not only whether information existed but also who was expected to use it.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry said the crew list for FZ1073 was not received by its security division. The ministry also said FlyDubai had been instructed to carry out required background checks on its crews and had committed to applying Israel’s restrictions concerning crew assignments.
The ministry’s aviation-security system has a formal role in coordinating security procedures for aircraft arriving in or passing through Israeli airspace. The ministry’s Aviation Security Operations Center describes itself as a central coordination point for security, defense, civil-aviation and government agencies involved in arriving aircraft.
But officials have also said the ministry relies heavily on security checks conducted by foreign carriers and does not have the intelligence capability to individually examine every person on every flight.
The result is an unresolved question over where responsibility lay between the airline, the passenger-data system, the Transportation Ministry and the intelligence agencies.
The Omani nationality became a key issue
The alleged attacker was an Omani national. Oman does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, making his presence as a co-pilot on an Israel-bound commercial flight an immediate focus of the security review.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel has longstanding arrangements with foreign carriers concerning pilots who are citizens of countries that do not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel.
Whether those arrangements were followed in the FZ1073 case is part of the broader examination now underway.
The question is separate from whether the cockpit attack itself was successfully prevented. The aircraft landed safely in Saudi Arabia after passengers and crew members intervened, and Israeli authorities have since reviewed aviation-security procedures. Netanyahu’s office said immediately after the incident that he had instructed security services to prepare for additional potential threats.
A system can receive information without necessarily reviewing it
The emerging dispute highlights an important distinction in aviation security: having access to passenger or crew information does not necessarily mean that an agency is required to manually examine every name.
The Israeli passenger-data system was established under legislation adopted in 2023. The system allows information to be collected and made available to designated government and security bodies for authorized purposes.
The question now is how that system was applied to FZ1073.
Israeli officials have said the Transportation Ministry did not receive the relevant crew list, while other reporting indicates that the Tax Authority, which houses the passenger-data center, did receive information from FlyDubai.
That leaves several issues for investigators to establish: which authorities had the data, which agencies were expected to review it, what security instructions applied to foreign flight crews, and whether any warning should have been generated by the Omani co-pilot’s nationality.
None of those questions has yet produced a final official finding of responsibility.
Netanyahu orders aviation-security review
Netanyahu has ordered a review of security procedures for international aviation following the incident.
The Israeli government had already acknowledged the seriousness of the cockpit attack immediately after the aircraft landed in Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu said the pilot had apparently tried to crash the plane and praised passengers who entered the cockpit and helped prevent a larger disaster.
Israel’s official aviation-security structure already covers arriving foreign aircraft. The Aviation Security Operations Center says it coordinates security procedures for aircraft entering and transiting Israeli airspace.
The review will therefore have to determine whether the existing system functioned according to its assigned responsibilities or whether information was available but not acted upon.
Previous warnings about aviation-security coordination
Israel’s State Comptroller had previously identified questions surrounding the division of responsibility for international civil-aviation security.
A 2024 audit recommended that the National Security Council, working with the Transportation Ministry, Finance Ministry, Civil Aviation Authority, Shin Bet and police, conduct a comprehensive review of aviation security, including foreign civilian aviation entering Israel. The report also called for clearer arrangements concerning responsibility and resources.
That earlier report does not establish that the recommendations were connected to the FZ1073 incident. It does, however, provide documented background for the current debate over how responsibilities for foreign aviation security are divided.
What the new disclosure does — and does not — establish
The reported UAE disclosure adds an important piece to the timeline before the cockpit attack, but it does not by itself establish an Israeli security failure.
The anonymous regional officials’ account indicates that information about the flight was shared before departure and that no warning was raised. Israeli officials, meanwhile, disagree about which institutions received or were responsible for reviewing the information.
It is therefore premature to conclude that a particular Israeli agency ignored a warning, failed to conduct a legally required check or knowingly cleared the Omani co-pilot.
The same caution applies to FlyDubai. The existence of a crew-information exchange does not establish that the airline knowingly violated a security requirement or that its management was aware of the co-pilot’s alleged threat.
Those questions remain part of the investigation.
The central question now
The FZ1073 investigation is moving beyond the cockpit attack itself toward the security chain that existed before the aircraft departed Dubai.
Investigators will need to establish what information was transmitted, who received it, what checks were required, whether those checks occurred and whether the Omani co-pilot’s nationality should have triggered additional scrutiny.
Until those questions are answered by the authorities conducting the investigation, the reported UAE disclosure should be treated as a significant security-development finding, not as proof of responsibility by Israel, the UAE or FlyDubai.
Reporting Credit: UAE authorities and FZ1073 investigation records; Israeli Prime Minister’s Office; Israel Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation Authority; Shin Bet; Israel Tax Authority; Israel State Comptroller; official aviation-security records.
