Over 100,000 passengers pass through Ben Gurion Airport without disruptions
Following the chaos recorded at Ben Gurion Airport last Thursday, yesterday the airport handled 101,000 passengers without any significant delays. This occurred despite claims from the workers' committee regarding staff shortages and the deployment of headquarters personnel to assist in shifts. All eyes are now on the coming Thursday, which is marked as one of the busiest days of August.
At the beginning of the month, the Israel Airports Authority identified five dates when more than one hundred thousand passengers were expected to pass through Ben Gurion Airport. On one of these, last Thursday, significant chaos occurred at the terminal. It now appears that this crisis has passed, with all attention shifting to the next critical date: August 27, this coming Thursday. However, despite concerns, yesterday (Sunday) 101,000 passengers passed through Ben Gurion Airport smoothly.
Although the Ben Gurion Airport workers' committee claims a shortage of 400–500 employees and has petitioned the labor court to officially shorten shifts, yesterday's operations proceeded quietly without the addition of any external staff. It should be noted, however, that the Israel Airports Authority announced that headquarters and management personnel joined the shifts on the ground, which likely helped ease the situation.
According to the airport's congestion metrics, the average delay over the last 24 hours was only 15 minutes, with 78% of landings and 70% of takeoffs departing on time. For context, the figures over the last seven days remained high for the season (largely due to last Thursday), averaging 84 minutes of delay for takeoffs and 71 minutes for landings.
According to Israel Airports Authority data, approximately 2.6 million passengers are expected to pass through Ben Gurion Airport during August. While most days see a volume of 90,000–95,000 passengers, the authority marked five specific dates when numbers were expected to exceed 100,000: August 6, 13, 17, 20, and 27. The successful handling of yesterday's high volume without issues may provide some relief to passengers scheduled to travel at the end of the week.
