An Ethiopian Airlines cargo plane that took off from Addis Ababa in the early hours of Monday was denied permission to enter Israeli airspace after authorities discovered that one of its pilots was an Indonesian national, from a country that has no diplomatic relations with Israel. The aircraft was forced to turn back, raising fresh questions about aviation security procedures following the attempted hijacking of a flydubai flight.
The flight manifest was received by Israeli authorities only after the aircraft had departed Ethiopia. A subsequent check revealed that one of the pilots held Indonesian citizenship. The plane was refused entry into Israeli airspace and returned to Addis Ababa, dumping fuel over the sea during the flight. At the Ethiopian airport, the Indonesian pilot was replaced by another pilot authorized to enter Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
Ethiopian Airlines
(Photo: shutterstock)
The incident suggests that tighter enforcement and updated instructions for screening foreign aircrews are beginning to take effect following the flydubai hijacking attempt. Unlike in that case, the authorities responsible for identifying pilots and other crew members who are not authorized to enter Israeli airspace appear to have acted as required.
Nevertheless, one critical question remains unanswered: Why are aircrew lists still being transferred to Israel’s National Passenger Screening Center only after takeoff, rather than before departure, as foreign airlines are required to do?
The terrorist pilot Hamam al-Hammami
The attempted hijacking of a flydubai passenger aircraft by Omani co-pilot Hamam al-Hammami, a national of another country with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, exposed serious questions about how foreign aircrews are screened and which Israeli authority is responsible for carrying out those checks.
On paper, responsibility for foreign flights rests with the Transportation Ministry. Its Security, Emergency and Cyber Division, operating through the Aviation Security Operations Center, is supposed to assess the security risks posed by foreign flights and issue security instructions to airlines.
The ministry, however, has argued that it is not an intelligence agency and lacks the tools needed to carry out intelligence background checks on passengers and crew members. As a result, its procedures rely in part on security screening conducted in the countries of departure and on commitments provided by the airlines themselves.
In the flydubai case, it emerged that the Transportation Ministry had never received the flight’s crew list. The Emirati airline had undertaken to screen its employees and had informed Israel that it had introduced restrictions into its crew scheduling system to prevent pilots from countries without diplomatic relations with Israel from being assigned to flights to the country.
Despite those assurances, al-Hammami was assigned to the flight. It also emerged that under the 2023 National Passenger Screening Center Law, the Transportation Ministry’s security division was entitled to access a database containing information about crew members on foreign flights. Yet since the database was established, the ministry had not sought to exercise that right.
As early as May 2024, State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman published a report on the security of international civil aviation to and from Israel, identifying serious deficiencies and security gaps, including in the protection of aircraft operated by foreign airlines.
One of the report’s central recommendations was for the National Security Council to lead a comprehensive review involving the Transportation Ministry, Finance Ministry, Israel Airports Authority, Shin Bet security agency and police, with the aim of reformulating Israel’s overall aviation security policy.
Ynet subsequently revealed that only after a closed-door discussion of the flydubai incident in the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee last Tuesday did the Transportation Ministry’s security division request immediate access to the National Passenger Screening Center to obtain nationality information about aircrews.
The ministry had failed to take that step during the previous three years, despite repeated requests from the Israel Tax Authority. Tax Authority officials confirmed that they had approached the ministry several times, explicitly asking it to arrange access to the information, well before the attempted attack.
After a ministry representative was formally authorized to access the system, the Transportation Ministry was informed that the database was not technically capable of providing aircrew nationality information 48 hours before departure, as required under the screening center law.
Instead, the information is updated only close to the time of departure, when it may already be too late to conduct effective advance security checks.
The Transportation Ministry complained about the arrangement. But it has since emerged that the procedure governing the transfer of aircrew information shortly before departure had itself been established with the ministry’s knowledge and approval.
The latest Ethiopian Airlines incident demonstrates that Israeli authorities can identify an unauthorized crew member and prevent an aircraft from entering the country’s airspace. What remains unresolved is why that screening still takes place after an aircraft is already in the sky.