Recent months have seen hundreds of thousands of travelers pass through Ben Gurion International Airport each month, but despite the pandemic being "behind us," the airport is experiencing more than a few problems, Israel Hayom reported.
Those responsible for loading the baggage are staff who belong to the airport. Due to the shortage of workers, which has been a problem for several months, the existing workers are forced to take various steps, including slowing their pace, sometimes intentionally. Both Israeli and foreign airlines have said that suitcases are loaded onto planes after great delays, and sometimes only after the plane was scheduled to take off. This causes the plane to lose its takeoff slot, leading to a delay which can sometimes last a significant amount of time.
The airlines told Israel Hayom about the severe damage this causes them, and the explanations they are forced to give their fuming customers.
"The passengers don't really care what the reason is - they see our logo, that of the airline, and rightfully demand compensation," the airlines told the site. Some of these airlines offer that their own employees do some of these jobs, so as to try to help speed the process up, but the airport does not allow them to help.
At the same time, in conversations with pilots from various airlines the pilots have said that they, the ones operating the plane need to undergo a complete security check, which includes several stages prior to boarding the plane, while at the same time, there are some people who do not undergo this security check.
"We need to undergo a full security check at the same time as someone is sitting in the belly of the plane and filling it with suitcases, the carriers and baggage people, come and go from the airport freely," the pilots said.
It turns out that their complaints are justified: Employees in the baggage department have admitted, "We brought proof that we do not have a criminal record at the beginning of our work here, and since then we come in with our employee tag, freely. There really is no supervision of entry and exit, we can bring in whoever we want with the tag and the fact is that people do this and there were even incidents of employees who smuggled in employees from Georgia. It's already become a running joke between us."