Retired Delta Pilot Warns Airline Hiring Screens Can Miss Radicalized Crew Members

A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and longtime Delta Air Lines pilot is warning that terror cells could exist inside foreign airline operations, following an alleged mid-flight attack by a FlyDubai copilot on the captain of an Israel-bound jet.

Buzz Patterson, who flew for Delta for 16 years and once carried the nuclear football for former President Bill Clinton, told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the possibility of infiltration by radicalized individuals inside airline staffs is real, particularly overseas.

“It’s possible that terror cells can exist inside airline companies – overseas, probably a lot easier than here, but it’s certainly a possibility,” Patterson said. “And I think it is something that DOJ needs to take a really good look at.”

The comments follow an incident in which a FlyDubai flight traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv was diverted to an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after the copilot allegedly attacked the captain, reportedly using a crash ax kept in the cockpit. The flight was carrying 174 passengers and eight crew members. Investigators are still examining the motive, including whether terrorism or mental health issues were factors.

Patterson said current vetting relies heavily on pilots disclosing their own activities and views, which leaves a gap when someone becomes radicalized without informing colleagues or employers.

“If you’ve got somebody that’s, you know, radicalized and if he doesn’t tell his company or his buddies, you’re never gonna know,” Patterson said. “So that’s part of the problem, I think, that we’re going to start seeing pop up in airline profiles and pilot profiles is we have a lot of people out there that probably shouldn’t be flying airplanes.”

Patterson explained that every Boeing 737, the model he flew throughout his career, carries a crash ax behind the copilot’s seat for emergency use, such as breaking through a door or window. He called the apparent use of that tool against the captain “savage.”

“Every 737… has a crash ax in the cockpit right behind the copilot so that we can, if we have to, either crack into the door or crack into the windows in the event of an emergency,” Patterson said. “If the copilot used the crash ax, that is savage because that thing will hurt you.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told “FOX & Friends” on Thursday morning that the copilot appeared to have undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination,” though officials would need additional time to determine whether he had ties to Iran. President Donald Trump has since said he believes such ties exist.

Patterson said he has emailed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to raise his concerns, arguing that international carriers, and some domestic ones, cast too wide a net when recruiting aircrew and pilots.

“International carriers and a few domestic carriers cast a very wide net looking for applicants to be aircrew members and pilots,” Patterson said. “And sometimes that net is a little too wide for who they attract to their airlines.”

He noted that background checks, medical histories and aviation violation records are typical screening tools, but said personality changes or radicalization after hiring are far harder to catch. Compounding the issue, he said, pilots frequently fly with colleagues they barely know.

“You never know what you’re gonna bring to the table, what you gonna find in the cockpit next to you when you first get to the cockpit, because we don’t fly with the same guys multiple times – we fly with different people almost every single time,” Patterson said. “So we never know who we’re getting either. And that’s why the initial conversation in the cockpit’s important.”

Patterson also raised the possibility, before official reports confirmed the crash ax as the weapon used, that a crew member could easily retrieve it unnoticed during a routine stretch in the cramped 737 cockpit.

“I can easily see the copilot saying he needed to stretch… it would be very easy for the copilot just to reach down while standing up and grab that ax. I mean, I can see it happening, and God forbid if it did because that’s brutal.”

Patterson argued the incident should prompt scrutiny not just of domestic airline hiring, but of which foreign crews are permitted to operate in American airspace.

“I think the United States needs to take a close look at not only who we are allowing to operate heavy machinery in this country… but more importantly, who are we allowing from the other carriers to fly into our airspace?” he said.

Netanyahu told Fox News the FlyDubai copilot was an Omani national who passed through a loophole in an Israeli restriction barring pilots from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel from such flights.

Patterson said aviation security has evolved significantly since the September 11 attacks, but that gaps clearly remain.

“You never know what you’re carrying on the back of the airplane,” he said. “Sometimes the guy you’re flying with is a wild card and sometimes the guys in the back of the airplane are a wild card. And I think that just some companies do the job, the security job, and they do the vetting screening better than other companies do.”