A 13-year-old boy managed to board an El Al plane at Ben Gurion Airportbafter passing all security and border-control stages without a passport or a boarding pass.
The plane was preparing to depart for the United States when the cabin crew realized the boy should not have been on board, briefly questioned him and removed him from the flight.
The Airports Authority said the matter is under investigation.
“The cabin crew on the flight noticed a child who boarded the aircraft without a boarding pass and without a passport, after he passed all security and border-control stages at Ben Gurion. The child was safely removed from the aircraft before takeoff, and the incident is under investigation by the Airports Authority,” El Al said in a statement.
All the stages in the chain of failure
The exceptional case raises serious questions about the operation of the security and screening system at the airport. On every outbound flight from Israel, and certainly on flights to the U.S., each passenger is required to go through a series of clear stages:
Security interview: presentation of passport and a valid boarding pass before entering the check-in area.
The airline check-in counters: presentation of passport, boarding pass, and also a valid U.S. visa or ESTA authorization.
Screening and security check: presentation of passport and boarding pass before proceeding to border control.
Border control: passing through a biometric or manned booth, depending on the type of passport.
Even at gate entry, right before boarding the plane, an additional check is performed, during which the passport must be shown, the boarding pass is scanned at a biometric station, and the passenger receives a printed stub of the boarding pass — creating a full and accurate indication of every passenger registered on the flight. At this stage, it should not be possible to sneak onto a flight without a valid boarding pass, because the biometric system is directly connected to the approved passenger list.
However, the current case revealed that, even this stage — long considered nearly foolproof, there is another hole in the security system. The boy managed to pass the gate stage without the system or human staff detecting the anomaly, and only after he sat down on the plane did the flight attendants notice the mismatch and remove him moments before takeoff.
This is a cumulative failure, for which all involved parties bear responsibility — from the Airports Authority, through the security apparatus, up to the El Al gate crew. Even if the flight attendants ultimately acted correctly and removed the child, the very fact that he reached the aircraft door points to a serious systemic lapse.