Brilio.net/en - Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is more than just the entry point for millions of passengers yearly. Its hands-down the worlds safest airport. No flight leaving the airport has ever been hijacked, and there has not been a terrorist attack at the airport since 1972, when three members of the Japanese Red Army killed 26 people and wounded dozens more in a shooting rampage.
Considering Israel's location in the Middle East and the easy access point that airports serve, this is definitely no easy feat.
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So how do they do it?
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The security begins in the Airport Security Operations Center, located near the airport. The small room, staffed 24/7, monitors every flight in Israeli airspace, including transit flights and nearby aircraft. Even the airline staff is checked thoroughly and examined carefully. Each flight, each passenger, and each member of the flight crew are checked long before arriving in Israeli airspace.
Dvir Rubinshtein, manager of the operations center for Israel's Ministry of Transportation, estimates that 10 flights a day are flagged and checked, which is a hefty number considering Ben Gurion is Israel's only major international airport and shutting it down would pretty much cut off Israel from the air.
Dolev says it is risk-based security, which has quite a few people raising their eyebrows as Israel and the United States are the only countries who legally allow racial profiling for security checking. For example, Palestinians and Arabs passing through Ben Gurion say they are more likely to be stopped, searched, and questioned. Even last year, Israel's High Court of Justice refused to ban racial profiling in a case brought by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. To really drive the stake into the ground, the court did leave the door open for the group to file a case in the future.
While Israel's leading airport may be a good basis for future airports, its important to note that comparatively speaking it is significantly smaller than other key international transit points, seeing 15% less passengers than Londons Heathrow International Airport and 20% less passengers than Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.