When it comes to national security, I like reading about Israel because they are so good at conducting security operations and they have decades of counterterrorism experience.

But even with their high expertise and decades of combating terrorism, they still fall victims to terrorism sometimes. The recent Flydubai hijacking terrorism proves that point where 170 Israeli passengers were almost killed on a plane because one co-pilot turned out to be a terrorist.

How is this possible?

There seemed to be many reasons why Israel had failed to foresee this terrorist attack although it was ultimately foiled by few brave passengers and one main pilot.

Number one reason: Flydubai has substandard hiring practices where terrorists can easily be hired as a pilot. The copilot who hijacked the plane was of the Omani nationality who has a deep hatred against Israel.

Why did Flydubai hire such a dangerous individual to fly a plane full of Israelis on their way to Israel? The hiring should have never happened in the first place if they had conducted an extensive background check on him. They never should have allowed the Omani national to fly an Israel-bound airplane since Omani does not have security relations with Israel.

They had made an assumption that pilots they hire are not dangerous, which is the most dangerous assumption of all.

Number two reason: the Israelis themselves were complacent. I’m not victim blaming but I’m not going to sugarcoat it either. If your country is currently at war and if you are the biggest target for terrorists, then you should probably not get on an airplane whose pilots might hate you because of your nationality.

Of course, Flydubai had no prior history of terrorist attacks, but that doesn’t mean you can trust them either. You should practice heightened vigilance since you are a citizen of a nation that is constantly being attacked. I think it would’ve been best if they had flown with the Israeli airline or just limit traveling altogether until the war is over.

Number three reason: there is no backup security system in case a copilot or a pilot becomes a hijacker. Such things rarely happen but it did happen recently with the Flydubai plane. Just because it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t mean it won’t either. It just means that nobody has exploited such vulnerability. But the vulnerability itself exists and is waiting to be exploited when someone discovers it eventually.

So what should one do if the pilot becomes hostile? Well, we don’t know yet. Should we have a security staff in the cockpit also? Maybe the plane should have a safety mechanism that prevents the pilot from doing something unsafe for passengers? Maybe we should implement an AI security system with a limited override mode?

I don’t know. But I’m sure those are the questions that are worth asking if we want to prevent another terrorist attack like this in the future.

The lesson of the day is that one should always challenge the conventional assumption especially when it comes to security and safety.

The assumption was that pilots rarely are terrorists..

Until now.

Keep challenging assumptions and be safe.