The man who once carried the nuclear football for former President Bill Clinton is sounding an alarm on potential terror cells inside foreign airlines after a FlyDubai copilot allegedly attacked the captain of an Israel-bound flight and sent the plane into a death-defying, aeronautics-defying dive.
“Its possible that terror cells can exist inside airline companies â overseas, probably a lot easier than here, but it’s certainly a possibility,” retired Air Force Lt. Col. Buzz Patterson, a former Delta Air Lines pilot of 16 years, told Fox News Digital on Thursday. “And I think it is something that DOJ needs to take a… really good look at.”
The warning came after a FlyDubai flight from the United Arab Emirates to Tel Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, after the copilot attacked the captain mid-flight, reportedly with the crash ax. The flight was carrying 174 passengers and eight crew, and investigators are still probing the motive, including possible terrorism or mental health factors â both of which leave Patterson concerned for public safety, if not national security.
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“If youve got somebody thats, you know, radicalized and if he doesnt tell his company or his buddies, youre never gonna know,” Patterson said, noting most protocols rely on “self-reporting your activities.” “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.”
The warning comes amid the revelations that a crash ax found behind the copilot chair in the Boeing 737 was used to bludgeon the pilot in an effort to commandeer the aircraft.
“Every 737, and that’s what I flew my entire life of all the different models, 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, we can do it,” Patterson said. “If the copilot used the crash ax, that is savage because that thing will hurt you.”
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told “FOX & Friends” on Thursday morning that the copilot appeared to have undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination,” but said officials would need days to determine whether he had ties to Iran. President Donald Trump since expressed the belief there were ties to Iran.
WATCH: PATTERSON CALLS COCKPIT AX ATTACK ‘SAVAGE’:
“International carriers and a few domestic carriers cast a very wide net looking for applicants to be aircrew members and pilots,” Patterson said, noting he has emailed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy of his concerns. “And sometimes that net is a little too wide for who they attract to their airlines.”
Patterson said U.S. and foreign airlines typically focus heavily on background checks, medical history and aviation violations, but warned that personality changes or radicalization can be difficult to detect once a pilot is hired.
Patterson also warned that pilots often fly with colleagues they barely know â much less a
