Wednesday’s attempted hijacking of Flydubai Flight FZ1073, allegedly carried out by the plane’s own co-pilot, has reopened a debate over how thoroughly fast-growing Asian carriers are screening the people they put in the cockpit.
A report published Friday by Germany’s Die Welt argues that airlines across Asia, racing to meet explosive demand for air travel, are failing to maintain the kind of close-knit “social controls” that once helped keep bad actors out of aviation. The paper singled out Flydubai itself as a case study: the low-cost carrier began flying only 17 years ago and has since expanded to nearly 100 aircraft and 16 million passengers a year.
Die Welt described Flydubai as emblematic of a broader trend — the breakneck growth of aviation across Asia that has produced new airlines and new routes “at a dizzying pace in recent years,” and, the report warns, possibly new dangers along with them.
The scale of the hiring challenge ahead is enormous. The Asia-Pacific region will need roughly 268,000 additional pilots and 298,000 additional maintenance technicians over the next 15 years just to keep pace with demand, drawing recruits from a region where national standards for safety and employee vetting vary widely.
An Omani co-pilot and an Israeli diplomatic snag
The incident has already triggered a political dispute in Israel. Flight FZ1073 was crewed by an Omani co-pilot, even though Israel maintains regulations requiring that inbound flights be piloted by crew from countries with which it has diplomatic relations — a category that does not include Oman.
Israel is widely considered to have the strictest airline security regime in the world. The United Arab Emirates, for its part, prides itself on rigorous standards, and Dubai International Airport, from which the flight departed, has long carried a reputation for safety and professionalism. Despite that, an Omani national ended up at the controls of the aircraft on Wednesday carrying a blade.
An Israeli passenger aboard the flight, Yaniv Hayoun, was photographed with blood on his shirt after the plane made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and was met by relieved family at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv.
Aviation security experts told NBC News on Friday that Israel has historically relied on friendly carriers like Flydubai to vet their own flight crews and to honor Israel’s crew-nationality rules on inbound flights. That arrangement of trust is likely to come under immediate scrutiny following Wednesday’s near-catastrophe.
A thinner fraternity of pilots
Die Welt also flagged a less obvious consequence of rapid industry growth: the professional community of pilots and airline staff is no longer as tightly connected as it once was. Crewmembers are increasingly likely to be paired for a flight without knowing one another at all, sometimes even facing language barriers in the cockpit.
The International Air Transport Association warned earlier this year of an “unprecedented talent challenge” facing the industry, as rapid growth and new technology make it harder to find pilots and staff with the right skills. IATA has urged airline human resources departments to “move beyond their traditional framework” to speed up hiring — a push that critics worry could come at the expense of thorough vetting, even as greater “workplace flexibility” brings together crews from increasingly different cultures, languages and security backgrounds.
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