Ben Gurion Airport under fire: ‘No airport has operated like this under war conditions’

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On Saturday morning, February 28, Operation Roaring Lion began, and Israel’s skies shut down once again, as they had during the earlier Operation Rising Lion. With the outbreak of that war, about 80 aircraft parked at Ben Gurion Airport had to be evacuated immediately.

This time, however, lessons from the previous round meant contingency plans were already in place, including a structured framework to keep the airport operating under attack, subject to Home Front Command guidelines, the Civil Aviation Authority and security officials.

To see how that plan works in practice, we joined a special tour of the airport on Sunday, as it continued operating under missile fire and repeated alerts.

The tour began with a descent into a protected shelter. This was not a drill. Phones around us blared with the harsh alert tone as a real siren sounded. A glance at the Flightradar app showed an Air Haifa flight from Larnaca circling in the air, delayed before landing, a routine procedure since the start of the rescue effort.

In the operations control room overseeing the “Open Skies” mission, another situation assessment was underway despite ongoing missile launches, with all relevant agencies present. Listening to the briefings, we learned that a missile fired from Iran toward central Israel had been successfully intercepted.

At the same time, standard protocol kicked in. Specialized runway vehicles, known as “carpets,” scanned takeoff and landing strips for debris and metal fragments from the interception. They collected the shrapnel and cleared the runways thoroughly.

Moments later, we were informed of another missile launched toward Eilat. The intensity underscored the challenge facing crews working around the clock in what may be one of the most complex operations ever managed in civil aviation. Only after the runways were fully cleared did operations resume, with landings and takeoffs restarting under strict limitations. View gallery

A passenger’s path: From Hall G to Gate C

What does flying from Ben Gurion look like in wartime? Departing passengers check in and undergo security screening in Hall G, not the usual departures hall. The reason is proximity to shelters, allowing up to 1,500 people to be evacuated quickly if needed.

After check-in and security, passengers proceed through border control and head to Concourse C, where they wait at the gate. Only one café is open, along with a small duty-free shop across from it.

On the tarmac, just one commercial concourse is active. At the time of our visit, two aircraft were preparing for departure, one from Israir already pushed back toward the runway, and another from Arkia still boarding.

Otherwise, the airport was nearly empty of commercial planes. Aircraft do not remain parked here; they land, take off and clear the area quickly. Much of the airfield is now dedicated to U.S. aerial refueling planes operating around the clock, giving the airport the feel of an American military base.

The next stop on the tour was the duty-free zone. “It’s not pleasant to see everything closed,” Kedmi said. “But Ben Gurion airport, operating under war conditions and missile fire from Iran and Hezbollah, is functioning in an unprecedented way. No airport in the world has maintained inbound and outbound flights under such intense fighting.”

"The airport is operating under a strict capacity cap of 2,300 people at any given time to ensure rapid evacuation if needed. It’s not worth risking even one passenger’s life for a flight,” Kedmi said.

At that moment another alert sounded for missiles fired toward central Israel. Staff immediately sprang into action, calmly and efficiently directing passengers in the hall toward the protected shelters.

“This is why the framework allows a maximum of 100 passengers on narrow-body aircraft and no more than two flights per hour, both departures and arrivals,” Bar-Oz explained. “What allows us to reopen the skies for such a complex operation starts with protecting human life, without taking unnecessary risks.”

"Everything is tightly scheduled. Boarding takes about 20 minutes, and each flight cycle is calculated at roughly half an hour. At peak, the airport is handling about 1,000 passengers per hour.

The tour concluded at the control tower, in the radar room beneath the glass cab above. There, Deputy Director of Operations Assi Ben-Michael gave a detailed briefing on the radar units, approach control and area control.

“Air traffic management has several moving parts, and this is one of them,” he said, without going into detail. “In practice, aircraft control is handled from here. We are fully coordinated with the Air Force under very strict procedures. The complexity is high, because alongside passenger and cargo flights, a fleet of U.S. refueling aircraft is also operating, and the goal is to keep planes on the ground for as little time as possible.”

He noted that managing air traffic during wartime is fundamentally different. "In normal times, efficiency comes right after safety. Now, after safety the priority is operational coordination, especially those of the Air Force, so we can operate without interfering with them. It’s a major challenge, particularly since we sometimes have to move into protected shelters, while continuing to manage traffic and communicate with aircraft."

"The most challenging moments come when many aircraft are in the air and on the ground simultaneously, especially with heavy activity from U.S. refueling planes. During an alert, we still have to manage the airspace, and it can reach very intense peaks. We maintain continuous communication with aircraft, factoring in each plane’s fuel levels while keeping safety above all else.

To enable the effort, the head of the Home Front Command approved an exception to standard protection policies at Terminal 3, allowing up to 2,300 people to be present at the same time, including about 800 airport staff.