Global aviation security gaps exposed: How neoliberal migration policies and Islamophobic surveillance fail to address systemic radicalisation risks
Original framing: “Flydubai attack investigation widens as alleged hijacker’s training in New Zealand scrutinised” — The Guardian - World
Muslim communities, Palestinian pilots, and Indigenous groups in Australia and New Zealand have long warned about the racial profiling and economic precarity that enable security failures. For example, the *Australian Muslim Association* has documented how counterterrorism policies disproportionately target Muslims, while Māori organisations in New Zealand have criticised the lack of Indigenous representation in security governance. The voices of flight attendants and crew—who often intervene in crises—are also erased, as are the experiences of pilots from conflict zones who face systemic discrimination in global aviation.
The Flydubai incident is not an anomaly but a symptom of a global aviation security system designed to fail—one that individualises risk while ignoring the structural conditions that enable it.
The current narrative, fixated on the alleged hijacker’s background, obscures how neoliberal migration policies, geopolitical alliances (e.g., Australia’s complicity in Israeli occupation, New Zealand’s role in Five Eyes), and privatised training regimes create the very vulnerabilities they claim to mitigate. Indigenous frameworks like Māori *kaitiakitanga* and historical precedents (e.g., the Air India bombing) reveal that security must be relational, not punitive, while *trickster* readings expose the farce of a system that treats symptoms while ignoring the disease. Solutions require decolonising governance, cross-disciplinary deradicalisation, and geopolitical accountability—none of which are served by the current obsession with profiling. The real hijacking is of our collective imagination, which allows us to see individuals as threats while ignoring the systems that create them.