Ben Gurion International Airport

   

Ben Gurion International Airport or Ben Gurion Airport, (named for David Ben-Gurion), located near Lod and once known as Lod Airport, is 15 km southeast of Tel Aviv, and is the largest international airport in Israel. The airport's IATA airport code is TLV, and its ICAO airport code is LLBG. It is operated by the Israeli Airports Authority.

The airport, named after Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, is the hub of El Al Israel Airlines. During the 1980s and 1990s, it was a focus city of the now-defunct Tower Air.

The new ultra-modern terminal, Terminal 3, was opened on Novemebr 2, 2004, and the first flight to take off from it was an El Al flight to New York City. Terminal 3 replaced the old Terminal 1 which was built during the days of The British Mandate over Palestine in the 1930's. Terminal 1 had extensions added to its original design but as years passed by there was a need for a new terminal. The new terminal is currently built for a capcity of 10 million passengers a year, and potentially could go up to 16 million passengers a year. It cost about 1 Billion US Dollars to build the new terminal and it's considered to be the largest single infrastructure project built in Israel to date. In the new terminal, there is a new connector for passengers to step directly off the airplane into the terminal without having to go down steps and take a bus to the terminal as was the case in Terminal 1. Starting in 2005, Terminal 1 is to handle domestic flights which are currently handled by Terminal 2.

With the opening of Terminal 3, a new train line opened a month earlier linking the new terminal to Tel Aviv and points North.

Ben Gurion has long been a target of Palestinian terrorist groups, and so among the many terrorist attempts, in 1985, a TWA Boeing 727 flying from Tel-Aviv to Rome was hijacked and forced to fly to Beirut. The plane carried many American and Israeli passengers, and one US Marine died, when the Delta Force stormed the plane.

On May 30, 1972, 26 people (including 2 terrorists) were killed and 80 injured in an attack by the Japanese Red Army in the passenger arrival area. The victims included Aharon Katzir, a prominent protein biophysicist, and a group of 20 Puerto Rican tourists who had just arrived in Israel.

Airlines flying to Ben-Gurion International Airport include:

External links



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