Ben Gurion baggage shutdown causes flight chaos

Hundreds of suitcases piled up at Ben Gurion International Airport and flights were delayed when the baggage handling system shut down in the main terminal for hours on Monday.

In the middle of Israel’s busy tourist season, hundreds of travellers left without their baggage as airport workers struggled to resolve the problem, finally succeeding after 10 hours, Ynet reported.

“We were told to take all the important things with us because our luggage might be delivered to us only days later,” the Israeli news website quoted one traveller as saying. “It’s terrible mismanagement.”

According to Haaretz, flights taking off from the old Terminal 1 building were not affected. The newspaper reported that an estimated 80,000 people were expected to pass through the airport on Monday.

According to the business news outlet Globes, tourism to Israel was up 11 percent between January and July over the same period the previous year, with some 2.8 million visitors coming from abroad.