#BrusselsAttacks: ‘Adapting a new way to protect passengers in an airport doesn’t happen in one day,’ says former security head of Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport

"I hope that Belgian authorities are taking precautions in order to protect the passengers who are waiting in queues outside the terminal of Brussels," said Pini Schiff an Israeli expert of airport security, writes Yossi Lempkowicz, senior media advisor Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA).

Thousands of travellers queued for hours on Monday  and some missed their flights amid tighter security checks before they can enter the newly reopened departures hall following the terror attacks on 22 March when suicide bombers blew themselves up and killed 16 people.

According to some reports, the terrorists targeted the check-in desks of Israeli, American and Russian airlines. "Keeping people outside the terminal standing in queues it’s creating a certain risk for these people,’’ Pini Schiff, a former aviation security supreme officer at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport and currently CEO of Israel’s association of security companies, told Europe Israel Press Association (EIPA).

‘’I can’t go inside their heads and I don’t know what they’are thinking to do in  the future. But you know after such an attack probably they are trying to find a certain solution of preventing another attack in the way it happened a few weeks ago.’’

Officials from Brussels Airport but also from regional Charleroi Airport have recently travelled to Tel Aviv to learn about the Israeli experience. Ben Gurion Airport is considered as one of most secure airport in the world. Security is a must but this happens with a fluidity for passengers.

There are 11 security and inspection points at Ben Gurion Airport. They spread from a roadblock at the airport entrance to the airplane gates.

The first security check-point is actually on the road to the airport, where security personnel check travellers and the people bringing them. All cars are stopped on the way to the airport. Some are searched by armed guards and license plates are scanned by a computer.

Security personnel have access to passenger lists, and are able to crosscheck those lists with lists of people under surveillance in order to know immediately who has to go through a stricter security check.

There is then another layer of security to physically get into the departures hall, where passengers who arouse suspicion are checked. Uniformed and undercover armed security personnel are stationed inside and outside the terminals. Cameras – some in plain sight, some hidden- provide additional surveillance. Travellers are subject to profiling and questioning about the purpose of their travel, their personal background and their luggage.

Israel culture is much focused on security with most citizens doing mandatory military service. The airport handles 15 million passengers a year.

‘It takes at least months or even more until you change your methods of how to protect the airport’

‘’One visit or two visits in Israel in order to learn how to adapt the Israeli approach for security is very good but adapting a new way teaching passengers or protecting passengers in an  airport doesn’t happen in one day. It takes at least months or even more until you change your methods of how to protect the airport,’’ says Pini Schiff.

‘’You need to write new regulations, change the structures, modify the way of entering the airport area, you have to recruit people, train them, teach them…. It can’t be done in one day. Therefore I can understand what the Belgian authorities are doing despite the fact that I agree that queues outside the airport is a risk.’’

In Israel too it took some time… ‘’We started in the early seventies. Therefore those days we have all the facilities in order to protect the airport as we understand it in the Israeli approach. But for the Belgian airport or any other airport in Europe that wants to make any changes it will take a long time, at least a year or two,’’ concludes Schiff.