Global Airport Executives To Learn From Ben-Gurion

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Ben-Gurion International Airport enjoys a well-deserved reputation for being one of the most secure and safe airports in the world. Aviation executives from forty countries will visit the world-renowned airport next month to learn about Ben-Gurion’s security procedures.

Ben-Gurion is one of the world’s safest airports. There hasn’t been a terrorist attack at Ben-Gurion since 1972 and no flight to depart from it has ever been hijacked. More than sixteen million passengers pass through its gates in any given year, and to most of them – the extensive security procedures are largely invisible.

The first layer of defence is Ben-Gurion’s Airport Security Operations Centre. Every flight that passess in the area is heavily monitored and every passenger and crew members to pass through Israeli airspace goes through a background check long before their flight takes to the air.

Dvir Rubinshtein, operations center manager for the Israeli Ministry of Transportation, told CNN that each day, around ten flights are flagged for security irregularities. “There is, every day, a situation where we have such concerns [about a flight],” he said, “and we check that and verify that everything is security cleared.”

With the unprecedented terror risk faced by airports around the world, nations are looking to the experts to improve their own security. Because of its track record, Ben-Gurion Airport is a natural guide for them to follow.

“Most of the countries are actually coming here often to see how Israel is dealing with security aviation and the threats from terror aviation,” Rubinshtein said.

Aviation security expert spoke with CNN, saying that some [of Ben-Gurion’s] fundamental principles and some best practices can be deployed in other parts of the world. But as Ben-Gurion is relatively small by global standards, airport executives would have to adapt its policies to their own individual, local needs. “It’s not a copy and paste,” he said, “because it’s not a situation where one size fits all.”

Whatever adjustments they have to make, these countries surely have a lot to learn from Ben-Gurion’s expertise.