Israel's Main Airport Is Falling Apart
Israel’s main gateway, once hailed as a national achievement, is now plagued by filth, broken equipment, endless lines, and crumbling infrastructure. Despite massive duty-free revenues, the Airports Authority fails to maintain even basic standards.
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Anyone who travels frequently knows airports vary in comfort and efficiency. The giants of Europeת Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurtת are exhausting in scale but operationally functional. Others, like Athens, excel in passenger experience, winning awards for innovation, sustainability, and design. Ben Gurion, by contrast, fails on both counts: efficiency and maintenance.
Two decades after Terminal 3 opened as a symbol of national pride, its once-iconic fountain is dry and abandoned, baggage belts often malfunction, and stained carpets reek of the 1990s. Floors are filthy, trolleys squeak and bizarrely require a credit card to unlock, and the lounges serve dreary kosher meals reminiscent of an army canteen. Duty-free queues stretch endlessly, and even a mediocre sandwich or coffee feels outrageously overpriced.
The neglect is visible everywhere: broken tiles outside arrivals, smoking areas overflowing with cigarette butts, malfunctioning vending machines, and a chronic shortage of seating. Passengers arriving on weekends face another absurdity, no train service into Tel Aviv.
Elsewhere in the world, airports thrive: Zurich handles 31 million passengers a year and is Europe’s cleanest; Singapore’s Changi moves nearly 68 million and ranks best worldwide for design and upkeep; Dubai operates at the staggering scale of 92 million. Israel, a country with minimal domestic tourism, cannot keep its only international hub clean or functional.
And it’s not about money. Duty-free revenues alone top 1.1 billion shekels annually, with per-passenger income higher than many European airports. The Israel Airports Authority, a government body under the Transport Ministry, is tasked with ensuring maintenance and upgrades. Instead, Ben Gurion has become a national embarrassment.
An airport is a country’s calling card, the first impression for tourists, business leaders, and politicians, and the first embrace for Israelis returning home. Ben Gurion should be a gateway of pride, not a neglected back door that feels more like a service exit to a garbage room.