From the Liveblog of
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Transportation Ministry: Can’t say that flights are 100% safe, we don’t do background checks on foreign pilots
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As questions mount over what the Israeli government could have done to prevent the near-disaster on flydubai Flight 1073, the Transportation Ministry says it does not perform background checks on pilots who fly into Israel, adding that it can’t promise those flights will be “100 percent” safe.
The statements, made in a briefing to reporters on Saturday night, come after multiple reports that pilots from hostile states have repeatedly flown planes into Israel despite regulations meant to prohibit them from doing so. The perpetrator of the terror attack on the flydubai flight, Hamam al-Hammami, was a citizen of Oman, which does not have relations with Israel.
In the briefing, according to reports in Hebrew media, the Transportation Ministry’s security division denies that it got the names of pilots and crew in advance, or that it has the ability to perform background checks on foreign pilots flying into Israel.
“We are not an intelligence body that checks the intelligence background of foreigners,” a representative of the division says in a statement, according to Ynet. “We have no forces abroad. We have no staff that checks every person there.”
The division also says it cannot specify how many pilots from hostile states have landed in Israel, and that it cannot promise that flights on foreign airlines will be completely secure. The division says it outsources background checks to the airlines themselves.
“Nothing is 100% when it comes to security,” the division’s representative says, according to Ynet.
Channel 12 quotes the representative as saying that the ministry can’t promise “100% that this won’t happen again,” and that the only foolproof way to stop such threats is to bar foreign airlines from landing in Israel entirely.
Speaking to the Kan public broadcaster, Transportation Minister Miri Regev says determining the security of air travel is the responsibility of Israel’s security establishment.
“Those who are supposed to say what the threat level is, and whether you can travel to a given destination, are security officials,” she says.
The Times of Israel Community.