You probably didn't know: The free method for shortening queues at Ben Gurion Airport | Israel Hayom

Ben Gurion Airport is expected to be crowded during the coming summer days, with an estimated 100 people expected to visit the site during the hot season. The significant traffic is scheduled to start in July, but the peak is expected to arrive during August.

In contrast to 2022, this year Ben Gurion Airport has installed automatic kiosks that can be used by passengers of many airlines that have already joined the service – one such is El Al, the airport's most active airline, which is responsible for about a quarter of the number of flights departing and landing at Ben Gurion Airport, which joined the service on Monday.

The companies that have joined the service so far, in addition to El Al, are Turkish Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Delta, United, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and soon Pegasus, Air France and KLM. Later on, other companies may join the free service, which significantly helps shorten queues at the Israeli airport.

They will save you a lot of time. Service stations at Ben Gurion Airport // Photo: Shimon Yaish

So how does the service work? If you are flying on one of the airlines that have joined it, it is recommended to check in online in advance, arrive at those stations and print the tag attached to the suitcase. Then, attach the tag to your suitcase and you'll end up at designated counters with shortened queues where you just send your luggage – saving significant time standing in lines during the boarding process.

At the moment, low-cost airlines and Israeli airlines Arkia and Israir have not yet joined the service, which means that there is still a significant share of passengers who will not be able to use it, but some may join it later. Ben Gurion Airport aims to increase the number of passengers who will be able to use the service to about 80% of all passengers who will pass through Ben Gurion Airport, in order to try to prevent images similar to those we saw last year, when masses of passengers stood in long lines that in some cases stretched to the terminals.

Huge queues at Ben Gurion Airport (archive), photo: Coco

Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us