When the Threat Wears the Uniform

On Wednesday, flydubai Flight FZ1073 was carrying more than 170 Israelis home from Dubai when the jet suddenly began to dive. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man responsible was sitting in the cockpit. The co-pilot, a trained professional in the airline’s uniform who was trusted with every life on board, had stabbed the captain and, Israeli officials say, tried to bring the plane down.

In the quarter century since September 11, we have built an enormous security system around one idea: keep dangerous people off the plane. We scan shoes, confiscate water bottles, reinforce cockpit doors and run every passenger through databases. Very little of that system is designed for the harder case, when the person we screened, credentialed and put in command is the one who turns on us.

The account that has emerged from passengers, Israeli officials and the airline is remarkable. The captain, Indian national Smit Machchhar, was wounded but managed to open the cockpit door and call for help. Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli plumber traveling with his family, forced his way in with a member of the crew. He put the co-pilot in a chokehold and dragged him out while other passengers pinned him down, then went back to the controls and pulled the jet out of its dive. Hayun had never flown a plane. He told Netanyahu he knew what to do from watching the documentary series Air Crash Investigation. Other flydubai pilots on board then took over and landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Machchhar is in stable condition, according to the Indian Embassy in Riyadh.

The attacker, meanwhile, remains almost a blank. More than a day later he has not been publicly named. Israeli officials have identified him only as an Omani national, and Israeli media report that he joined flydubai less than a year ago. He is in Saudi custody, and Saudi authorities have said almost nothing. The UAE has opened a formal investigation and Israel says it will take part in the interrogation. Netanyahu has said the suspect underwent Islamist radicalization, while adding that he cannot yet confirm any link to Iran. Flydubai says the motive is unknown and has urged the public not to speculate.

Some questions do not depend on motive. Oman has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel, so investigators need to explain how this pilot was cleared to fly into Ben Gurion and what screening flydubai and Israeli aviation security carried out before he was assigned to the route. They also need to establish how a knife reached the cockpit. The people on that plane, and everyone who boards the next one, deserve those answers in public.

Now consider how the story first reached the world. In the opening hours, major outlets described an “altercation,” a “fight,” a “struggle” and a “brawl” between pilots. They did not invent that language. Flydubai’s own statement called it an altercation on the flight deck and made no mention of a stabbing, and newsrooms are right to be careful before using the word terrorism.

Caution and accuracy are different things, though. An altercation implies two people who share responsibility for a dispute that got out of hand. When one pilot is stabbed at the controls and the other is restrained by passengers, that word erases the victim, the attacker and the people who saved everyone on board. Readers who saw only the first headlines came away thinking two coworkers lost their tempers, and many of them may never see the fuller story.

Security professionals have a name for this danger: the insider threat. It is the pilot, guard, soldier or officer who already has the access, the credentials and the trust of everyone around them. It is the hardest threat to catch because the system is built to wave that person through.

We have seen it before, and we keep treating each case as an isolated tragedy. In 2015, a Germanwings co-pilot locked his captain out of the cockpit and flew the plane into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. U.S. investigators concluded that EgyptAir Flight 990 went into the Atlantic in 1999 because of the relief first officer’s deliberate control inputs, killing all 217 aboard, although Egyptian authorities rejected that finding. In 2009, an Army psychiatrist opened fire at Fort Hood and killed 13 people on the base where he served. In Afghanistan, coalition troops were repeatedly attacked by men wearing the uniforms of the forces they were training.

A reinforced cockpit door protects the pilot from the cabin. It cannot protect the cabin from the pilot. The same is true of the badge that opens the door to a synagogue, a school or a police precinct. Security built only to keep outsiders out leaves the most dangerous door wide open.

For Jews and Israelis, this is not an abstract debate. Flydubai kept flying to Tel Aviv during the Gaza war when many airlines stopped, and Israelis came to depend on it. The air links that grew out of the Abraham Accords are worth protecting, and protecting them means insisting on honesty when something goes wrong inside the system. Flydubai has now suspended its Israel flights while the investigation continues, which shows exactly how much is at stake.

It also means refusing to let language do the work of minimizing. When an attack on a plane carrying more than 170 Israelis is first presented as a workplace scuffle, Jewish travelers hear that their danger is a footnote. We have heard that message many times before. We do not have to accept it again.

The passengers on FZ1073 saw the threat for what it was and acted. The rest of us owe them the same clarity. Airlines and regulators should publish what they will change in pilot screening, ongoing security and psychological monitoring, and cockpit procedures. Investigators should release the attacker’s identity and motive as soon as they are confirmed. News organizations that ran the early “altercation” headlines should update their coverage so the record reflects what happened.

Trust is the foundation of every system that keeps us safe, from the cockpit to the police station. It has to be earned and verified continuously, never granted permanently because someone wears the right uniform. Call this what it is, and then fix it.