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."It’s possible that terror cells can exist inside airline companies – overseas, probably a lot easier than here, but it's certainly a possibility," retired Air Force Lt.Col.
Buzz Patterson, a former 16-year Delta Air Lines pilot, 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 – both of which leave Patterson concerned for public safety, if not national security.FORMER ISRAELI PM HAILS ‘HEROISM’ AFTER PASSENGERS HELP THWART ALLEGED COCKPIT ATTACKCaptain Smit Machchhar, the Indian pilot who allegedly was attacked on a FlyDubai plane heading to Israel on Wednesday, Sept.30, 2026, was hailed by retired Lt.
Col.Buzz Patterson as a "hero" for hitting the button to unlock the cockpit door during a stabbing attack.
(Israel Foreign Ministry)"If you’ve got somebody that’s, you know, radicalized and if he doesn’t tell his company or his buddies, you’re 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 copi...