Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv saw its busiest day of summer 2015 – and likely the whole year – on Thursday.
The Israel Airports Authority announced that more than 70,000 passengers would pass through the airport on incoming and outgoing flights.
A total of 430 flights were scheduled to arrive and depart on Thursday. Next month, in August, around 1.7 million passengers are expected to pass through the airport – a seven percent rise compared to last year.
A very busy day at Ben Gurion Airport
The leading destination for Israelis going on vacation is Greece. On Thursday, 9,125 travelers were scheduled to return from or depart to Greece. Turkey was next with 7,772 passengers, followed by Germany with 5,885, Italy with 4,647, and the United States with 4,625. El Al was scheduled to fly 28 percent of passengers – 19,669 people.
According to travel booking website Smartair, the destinations that Israelis searched for the most when researching flights over the last month were Amsterdam, New York, Paris, Belrin, and Barcelona.
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Luggage in the check-in area on Thursday morning (Photo: Motti Kimchi)
(צילום: מוטי קמחי)
The most popular travel packages purchased by Israelis in the last month were to Rhodes, Cretes, Burgos, Prague, and Antalya, according to Travelist.
El Al was the busiest airline on this busiest day, followed by Aegean, Arkia, Turkish Airlines, Israir, and EasyJet.
Amit Cotler and Danny Sadeh contributed to this report.