Ben Gurion Airport is most disrupted in the world, day after wildcat labor strike

Ben Gurion Airport was the most disrupted airport in the world for departures on Friday morning, with delays averaging between 70 and 90 minutes, almost 24 hours after a wildcat labor strike drove a wave of cancellations.

By late afternoon, it was also the world’s most disrupted airport overall, with 30 delayed flights and an average delay of 62 minutes, data from Flightradar24 showed.

The airport was returning to normal operations over the weekend, after employees returned to work mid-afternoon Thursday after a two-hour wildcat strike.

The “surprise strike,” which the Histadrut labor union denied having called, came as a result of workers’ complaints relating to insufficient personnel to handle the influx of passengers during the August vacation rush. Staff left check-in counters unmanned and incoming flights were halted, causing massive delays.

The Finance Ministry estimated the cost of the strike at some NIS 30 million ($10 million), according to Hebrew media reports.

Yiftach Ron Tal, head of the Airports Authority, told the Ynet news site on Thursday: “I’m glad to say, the airport is returning to full operations, and even beyond that. We’re ramping up the number of departing flights, and will be doubling them in the coming hours.”

“I’m very hopeful that by morning, we’ll have reached a point where the airport is functioning normally,” he said.

One Israeli airline, which remained unnamed, told Kan late Thursday it expected operations at the airport would take about 24 hours to return to normal.

Thursday had been expected to be the busiest travel day of the past 12 months, with some 107,000 passengers set to flow through the airport, and more than 600 scheduled takeoffs and landings.

In the wake of the wildcat strike, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party stripped the airport’s workers’ union chief, Pinchas Idan, of his party membership.

Sources in Likud, speaking to the Ynet news site, alleged that the strike was an effort to harm the prime minister and Transportation Minister Miri Regev, both of whom toured the airport on Wednesday and heaped praise on its workers.

“No labor dispute was declared,” said a senior party official. “There were no threats, preliminary steps, that would have given early indication of a dramatic strike like this.”

“So what happened, after all? A clear attempt to harm Regev, and — indirectly — also Netanyahu,” the source said.

Channel 12 reported on Thursday that in fact, the strike was originally planned for Wednesday, but was delayed due to Netanyahu’s participation in the visit with Regev. After the visit, the transportation minister flew to Morocco for a “private” seven-day trip with top officials in her ministry.

In a bid to demonstrate the airport’s problems, according to Channel 12, Idan instructed workers not to load Regev’s luggage onto the flight.

Arkia Airlines CEO Oz Berlowitz then reportedly instructed workers to load Regev’s luggage. Ron Tal then delivered the same order. Idan reportedly saw a video of Ron Tal talking to the staffers, leading him to relent and have the luggage loaded.

The following day, according to the report, Ron Tal and Idan were scheduled to meet at 9 a.m., but Idan ditched the meeting, later claiming he wasn’t feeling well. The turmoil at the airport began shortly afterward.

Idan denied the report in a statement to Channel 12.

Idan blamed chronic worker shortages for the Thursday chaos, and said he’d written to Regev in June, telling her “the root of the problem is a severe manpower shortage,” noting that the Airports Authority had decided to lay off 250 temporary workers, despite the shifts being overwhelmed even when fully staffed.

Idan: ‘There was no strike’

In a Friday letter to Netanyahu and Regev as well as a separate message to airport employees, Idan denied that any strike happened at all.

He blamed the turmoil at the airport on festering staffing shortages that he had raised alarm about before. He said the airport’s management, not the staff, chose to halt operations.

“The outrageous and shameful event that took place yesterday… was not preordained,” he wrote in a letter to Netanyahu and Regev. “It was a direct result of a scandalous, unilateral, degrading and utterly irresponsible decision by management.”

“There was no strike yesterday — not a wildcat strike and no planned stoppages at all,” he claimed.

Watch Minister of Transportation Regev handing out compliments to Airport Authority employees yesterday, just before flying to Morocco for vacation
As a thank you they respond by bringing the airport to a complete standstill pic.twitter.com/gAG1pBjHm5

— #EBluemountain1 ???????? (@EBluemountain1) August 20, 2026

In his message to the workers, he called reports of a strike “a complete lie.”

He added in the letter to Netanyahu and Regev that the workers made no demands for increased pay, budgets, or benefits, and said what occurred was a result of “distress on the part of employees who simply ran out of energy.”

“We warned again and again in every possible forum… that the baggage handling system was subject to a severe staffing shortage.”

He said staff were made to work shifts of up to 13 hours.

“Rather than demonstrating humanity and managing the situation responsibly, the management chose to take the aggressive step of closing the [check-in] counters on their own initiative, creating an artificial crisis on the backs of the passengers.”

He called on the government to take emergency measures to increase staffing at the airport and improve conditions for employees there.

Netanyahu was apparently unmoved by Idan’s claims, submitting an official request to oust the union head from the Likud on Friday — a day after announcing his plan to do so.

“The event occurred one day after a visit by the prime minister and transportation minister at Ben Gurion Airport. It is clear that the timing was chosen to hurt the minister, the prime minister and Likud,” Netanyahu wrote, according to Hebrew media reports.