Surprise drill simulates attack, but airport fear is real

The Israel Airports Authority apologized on Sunday to dozens of passengers who were caught unawares on Saturday night during a surprise drill at Haifa Airport.

Passengers arriving from Eilat, as well as those flying to the resort city, spent a terrified 20 minutes believing they were caught in a terrorist attack, because the authorities failed to make clear that it was only a drill.

One passenger, Yochai Erez, told Channel 2 news that “people started yelling ‘Gunfire! Gunfire!’ and dropped to the floor.”

Another passenger, Haim Almozlino, told Army Radio: “There were two explosions; security guards yelled ‘Terrorists are shooting at you’ and we dropped to the floor … It had the atmosphere of a real terror attack, just without dead bodies on the floor.”

According to Erez, until people heard the announcement that the drill had ended, nobody even realized that it was not a real attack.

On Saturday night, the Airport Authority released a statement that “a security drill took place at Haifa Airport. The security personnel acted as is to be expected in this type of event and distanced the public [from the drill area]… During the evacuation from the terminal, individual passengers panicked.”

On Sunday, however, the Airport Authority released another statement in which it acknowledged that panic had been more widespread than “individual passengers” and that, when a chair fell to the floor and a passenger shouted “Gunfire!”, pandemonium ensued.