Panel says aviation security in Israel in "catastrophic state"

The Lapidot public committee, headed by Major-General (ret.) Amos Lapidot and appointed by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, said last week that aviation safety in Israel was in a “catastrophic state.” The panel’s final report criticized the infrastructure at Ben Gurion International Airport, air traffic control systems, and legislation relevant to air traffic safety. The final report, which was handed over to Mofaz at the end of December, points out a series of severe faults in aviation safety in Israel. The report followed the interim report compiled by the committee last August, which specifically targeted the 7 February 2007 incident at Ben-Gurion Airport in which a collision between an El-Al plane and an Iberian Airlines plane was barely averted.

Ha’aretz’s Zohar Blumenkrantz writes that the committee slammed the Israeli Association of General Aviation, saying it fails to function as the country’s central aviation body. The panel recommended it implement the new organizational structure which was recently approved, enlist eight experts in various aviation fields, and reauthorize and train officials in the association. The report also called for the establishment of an independent legal body to promote legislative activity in the field of aviation and to deal with various legal matters.

The panel criticized the air traffic control, maintaining that Israeli air traffic controllers do not always speak in English or use the accepted terminology. They called for increasing supervision on air traffic control systems and for better training the controllers. The Lapidot committee said Israel has not fully seen the technological developments of the last decades in the field of air traffic control systems. The Transportation Ministry’s spokesperson, Avner Ovadia, said that “the report has been delivered to the transportation minister, and will be published next week.