The Airports Authority reports that in 2022, approximately 20 million passengers will pass through Israel’s airports. After two years of global crisis, the opening of the skies and the signing of the Abraham Accords, there has also been a dramatic increase in the number of planes crossing Israel from east to west and west to east on their way from Jordan, to the Far East and the Persian Gulf to Europe and North America and back.
The vast majority of the flights flying in Israel’s airspace are the flights that take off and land at Ben Gurion Airport. Of the 14,409 international flights that crossed Israeli territory in November, 10,960 flights were to Israel. The rest are 3,449 international commercial flights that crossed Israeli airspace. It was reported from the Authority that this is an increase of 43% relative to the month of November last year. It was also reported that since the beginning of the year over 150,000 international commercial flights have passed through Israeli airspace.
The opening of Israel’s skies and the competition of the airlines for crossing into Israel reduced the cost of flights between the East and the West for the international airlines.
The operation of regular flights on routes to and from Israel and a significant increase in flight frequencies / on direct flights to Western and Eastern Europe and flights via Western and Eastern Europe to more distant onward destinations adds to the existing load on air traffic in Israel.
The expansion of the activity of the overseas flights will be in coordination and with the cooperation of the Air Force. The management of Israel’s spatial air control zone, which requires transit permits for commercial flights to fly within the territory of the country, is managed by the flight inspectors of the Airports Authority who manage civil air traffic in the entire airspace of Israel, the flights joining and departing from Israel’s airspace from the west and east and The flights crossing the space from the Cypriot control unit – through the Israeli space – under the management, supervision and control of the civil control units of the Airports Authority – to the Jordanian control space and so on in the opposite direction.