Name: While Missiles Fly, Flights Land: How Israel’s Airport Stays Open | WSJ
Uploaded: 2023-08-15T01:20:13.000Z
Duration: 7 min 9 s
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The morning of October 9th, fragments of a Hamas missile land less than a mile outside of Ben Gurion Airport, Israel's main international airport.

In the skies above, A Ryanair flight on approach diverted away.

And yet, in a matter of minutes, aircraft resumed taking off and landing at the airport, while the war continued.

Despite it being less than 40 miles from the front lines of Israel's war with Gaza, Ben Gurion airport has remained open throughout the conflict.

And while civil air spaces above war zones, like Ukraine, often remain closed from the moment war breaks out, Israel's civil airspace has continued to receive commercial traffic.

I think the key question here that everyone's asking is why haven't the Israelis closed their airspace?

And I think the answer is countries are always going to err on the side of keeping it open.

So how does Israel keep an airport open in a warzone?

And what are the risks to aircraft in the airspace?

Keeping airspace open can provide a vital corridor for Israel to allow people to leave, soldiers to return, and goods and supplies to continue entering the country during the conflict.

One of the steps the country has taken to try and protect those aircraft is to change the route they're approaching Ben Gurion from.

The main mitigation measure that we've taken is completely separating the routes from the area of the conflict.

The routes, basically, in and out of Israel are much northern than they are usually, going 10 miles south of Haifa.

According to Israel's Civil Aviation Authority,

the country's civil and military air traffic controllers also work very closely together and often sit in the same buildings and look at the same aerial picture.

And that allows them to coordinate on trying to ensure that missiles from the country's Iron Dome system don't impact civilian aircraft when they're intercepting Hamas missile.

It still leaves plenty of flexibility for the defense systems to plan their engagement, to plan their interception of a rocket.

On the ground, while Ben Gurion in airport can normally have over 10 aircraft waiting at its gates...

We've limited the number of aircraft that are loaded with passengers and with fuel, so you would see maximum six, normally four.

And when the aircraft are ready to depart, takeoff is as swift as possible, with no queuing on the runway.

Israel's Civil Aviation Authority says that part of the reason it's able to keep its airspace open is because it has remained open previously, through years of Hamas missile attacks.

Civil Aviation doesn't like doing new stuff, not in general, and specifically not in conflict.

And that's why the country issued a notice to airlines, saying its airspace would remain open but that airlines should use caution,

a notice the FAA and EASA, its European equivalent, have also sent out.

Yet, despite this, the vast bulk of international carriers have paused flying to Tel Aviv.

While many airlines stopped flying to Tel Aviv the day Hamas launched its surprise attack, others continued to to fly for a few days more.

A British Airways flight actually turned back moments before landing, as air raid sirens were sounding in the area surrounding the airport.

British Airways has issued a statement, saying it's suspended all flights to Tel Aviv until further notice.

Some Arnos, even though their insurance allows these operations, they don't want it.

Even though the airspace remains open, airlines will have many questions to consider if they operate flights into the region.

How frequent is the rocket fire from Gaza?

How deep into Israel are rockets being launched?

Where are those Iron Dome intercepts taking place?

Matt Borie is Chief Intelligence Officer and one of the co-founders of Osprey Flight Solutions,

an aviation risk management company that advises the likes of America's TSA.

His job is to evaluate some of the worst-case scenarios, and he thinks that Israel's airspace should be more restricted.

The area where the conflict is affecting, which includes Northern Israel, Haifa, Tel Aviv, should be paused until the trajectory of this conflict becomes more clear.

Matt cautioned that, even though aircraft were being rerouted to approach over Haifa, there had still been recent surface-to-air missile, or SAM, activity in the region.

The IDF has confirmed they employed a conventional SAM system to shoot down a rocket launch from Gaza, near Haifa.

Footage of the impact later appeared on social media.

Why this is a concern is because now we're creating the conditions for a shoot-down.

Civil aviation flying in between areas where conflict activity is happening.

Israel says that when a missile is fired, its air traffic controllers can have over a minute and a half to maneuver aircraft out of the area,

and in that time, aircraft can cover around 10 miles.

While neither Hamas nor Israel is likely to intentionally target civilian aircraft,

according to Matt, there's still a risk that an aircraft could be shot down if it's misidentified as a missile or other threat,

which is exactly what happened when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine by pro-Russia militia.

Weather caused this aircraft to deviate from its flight path, which led to the rebel group to interpret it as not a civilian airliner because it wasn't flying on the civilian airliner routes,

so Osprey has already told its clients that we assess the potential for miscalculation or misidentification in Israeli airspace to be likely in the near term under the current scenario.

Israel denies that misidentification is a major risk factor in its airspace.

There are technical limitations on some of the systems that, again, there is no possibility that an interceptor could target a civilian aircraft.

If anyone has a minimal knowledge in aviation, a screen showing a drone and a civilian aircraft and a fighter jet looks very, very different.

And the MA-17 and other tragic accidents that happened have a very, very different background, and none of it is relevant in this conflict.

While the situation in Israel is already complex, the addition of outside forces, like Syria and Hezbollah,

who have already engaged in limited artillery exchanges with Israel, could complicate things further.

Do you trust Hezbollah will not make a mistake on firing on a target over northern Israel?

Israel, however, says that it is monitoring risks from all sides.

We're monitoring very, very closely and looking at the risk very carefully, monitoring the situation in Lebanon, monitoring the situation in Syria.

I can assure you that, if we see many rockets launched towards Ben Gurion, we will freeze traffic in Ben Gurion, and traffic will go to Eilat Ramon.

As the situation in the skies above Israel evolves, its aviation authority maintains that it will remain accountable, whatever happens.

And we look at this role very, very seriously.