According to information released yesterday Monday by the Israeli Ministry of Transportation, of the nearly 70 airlines that otherwise serve Tel Aviv Airport, more than half are still flying there today. These are primarily the national companies El Al, Arkia and Israir, but also foreign companies. On Monday morning there were landings of Air Serbia from Belgrade, Tus Airways from Larnaca, Bulgaria Air from Sofia, Pegasus from Trabzon, Smartwings from Prague and Uzbekistan Airways from Tashkent. A Tus Airways flight from Düsseldorf to Tel Aviv was also scheduled for the afternoon.
This morning, several European airlines continued to cancel flights to Tel Aviv: Air France, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, ITA, Iberia, KLM, Aegean, Virgin Atlantic and many others.
The challenge of maintaining flights, at all costs
But is it possible to maintain air traffic in a city bombarded by rockets? Making a bit of history, the Israeli army commented on this subject in detail in 2015 after its operation against Hamas the previous year.
“Hamas has stated that disrupting traffic at Ben Gurion International Airport is one of its main objectives,” the Israeli army said at the time. “Closing Ben-Gurion would have been a major success for Hamas, whose goal was to cut Israel off from the world by attacking the airport.”
The Israeli military said at the time that safe air traffic was possible through advanced aerial surveillance, the Iron Dome missile defense system to protect the airport and aircraft on the ground, and route planning. special flights. But we know that coordinating everything so that there are no gaps in the protection system constitutes a major challenge.
