The United States has frozen the removal of US Air Force refueling planes from Ben Gurion Airport, Kan News reported Tuesday morning. According to Israel's Airports Authority, the freeze revives a threat to roughly 50,000 flight tickets that could be canceled during July if the aircraft removal does not move forward.
Last week, the United States had begun returning refueling planes to the Middle East and to Israel after they had been relocated to Europe amid the renewed fighting between the US and Iran.
The freeze reopens a parking-space crisis that has plagued Ben Gurion Airport for months. Dozens of American refueling and transport aircraft have occupied a significant share of the airport's parking capacity since Israel made the field available for US military operations amid the countries' close security cooperation, crowding out space needed for civilian flights. The crisis initially threatened as many as 2.4 million tickets before a partial removal of aircraft brought the risk down to several hundred thousand, and a subsequent agreement reached with the US military roughly three weeks ago appeared to have resolved the threat entirely, with dozens of planes transferred to Israeli Air Force bases around the country.
The renewed freeze comes as Ben Gurion Airport heads into some of its busiest weeks of the year, with the Airports Authority projecting passenger traffic to cross 80,000 people a day by the end of the month and to peak at roughly 94,000 passengers on July 30.
