#111 Libby Bahat, Israel Civil Aviation Authority: Flying civilians into a war zone

Libby Bahat 0:00

My normal job at the Civil Aviation Authority is a procedure designer, so I, am involved in the process of designing a new instrument landing approach to a runway, and the math is very clear. If you have a mountain this high, this far away from the runway, it's a very clear math. And the same with engineering. This is the things that made civil aviation amazing and almost bulletproof and almost 100% safe. Unfortunately, in the conflict zone area, this is not the situation.

Jim 0:43

Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Vertical Space and a conversation with Libby Bahat. Libby is the head of Aerial Infrastructure Department at the Israeli Civil Aviation Authority. So we found this topic really quite fascinating and timely. Libby shares how Israel's civil aviation system manages the extraordinary challenge of keeping commercial air traffic moving during wartime through real-time coordination, risk modeling, and close civil-military collaboration. I mentioned, Libby is the head of the Aerial Infrastructure Department at the, Civil Aviation Authority. He's been there for 17 years. He's a qualified lawyer and licensed private pilot. Within the authority, Libby has three main areas of responsibility. The first, which has previously brought him to this podcast, is leading the regulatory implementation of UTM in Israel. The second is in airspace infrastructure, including airspace design and instrument flight procedures. And the third, and the focus of today's discussion, is civil-military cooperation, both in peacetime and during armed conflict. In this role, he's responsible for assessing risks arising from civil aviation operations in conflict-affected airspace over Israel, developing mitigating measures where possible, and when necessary, supporting decisions to restrict or close airspace to civil aviation for safety reasons. Libby is married, has four kids, and lives in a kibbutz near, Jerusalem. Libby Bahat, welcome to The Vertical Space yet again

Libby Bahat 2:12

you so much. Very, really honored to be here again

Jim 2:15

You were such a star last time, we had to have you back

Libby Bahat 2:17

I have high expectations

Jim 2:19

tell us, what is something about flying into conflict zones that very few in aviation agree with you on?

Libby Bahat 2:27

You know how I, love this question. actually, I think the definition of civilians flying into conflict zone is, is something that's, that's kind of hard to accept, and people might argue, no, that, that's a no-no. You cannot fly into a conflict zone. That's simply not a place for ci- civil aviation. And, unfortunately, not only Israel that, that has, that has this dilemma, and it's not, only, third world countries and distinct areas in Africa or Ukraine. starting to see this in Central Europe. We're starting to see elements from the conflict, entering Romania, Poland, Estonia, and Latvia. So I think the past, this ar- argument, civil aviation should not exist in conflict zone, was a pretty decent argument to make, and, and that changed. So, I think more and more people now understand that, that it's, it's a complicated answer, and there's no simple black and white. And, and I'm sure we'll dive, deeper into that as we go.

Flying into a conflict area

Luka 3:36

and Libet, before we do dive deeper, is my understanding of your actual position correct when I summarize it as the, the risk for civil aviation to fly into a conflict area can indeed be made, small enough, or actually it can be quantified, honestly enough, it can be minimized, it can be managed to the point where it becomes a, a defensible safety judgment and not a, commercial pressure or courage, let's even go that far. Did I get that right?

Libby Bahat 4:06

To a certain extent. unfortunately, in me as a, you could say an aviation specialist, I wish things were simple. I wish I had a criteria. I wish, like an engineer, I would have very specific numbers and very specific ways to calculate them. my normal job at the Civil Aviation Authority is a procedure designer, so I, am involved in the process of Designing a new ILS, a new instrument landing approach to a, a runway, and the math is very clear. If you have a mountain this high, this, far away from the runway, it's a very clear math. and the same with engineering, although I'm not an, an engineer. but this is a- the things that made civil aviation amazing and, and almost bulletproof and almost 100% safe. unfortunately, in the conflict zone area, this is not the situation. So first of all, I don't have a very strong, a very specific number and criteria. I know, okay, if the risk is one to a billion, I'm good. If it's, 10 to a million, it's not good. so the, the way you can quantify it is, is, is very challenging. Eventually, we have to use a little bit qualitative judgment and professionals working with a lot of groups, with a lot of individuals, with a lot of organizations check ourselves, to verify ourselves that what we are doing reasonable. yes, it's, it's, we can put the numbers only to a certain extent. I think I shared with you, the way we try to calculate the risk for a passenger on the ground in Ben Gurion. And, very, very quickly describing it, we check what is the, the risk for a certain day. how many missiles are we expecting? is the length of the event? Is an event of a missile, 20 minutes, 10 minutes? What is the risk of a certain flight to be in that timeframe? are the success rate of the interception? And, and then we start to see some numbers. How many debris are there from an interception? What are their size? What does it take to penetrate an envelope of an aircraft? So we do have some numbers we can use. We try to do it wherever we there are other models, by the way. this is not the only model we're, we're using, also for ri- for risks on the air. so it's, it's a combination of both, of, of math and numbers, but also, professional qualitative assessments

Luka 6:47

Yeah, and just for the audience, so ahead of the call, you shared with us a decision support tool that you have presented at ICAO. you gave us a, a bit of a situation update from, April, and then a frequently asked questions list that you share with flight crew. so we went through that. Thank you for, for sharing that. And what, what was striking, is exactly this tension that you bring up, where unlike developing a procedure where everything is known upfront and it can be highly, accurate and precise and safe, this is a different thing. This is a different beast. but despite that, when I looked at the materials, they still were surprisingly quantitative, as opposed to, you know, what perhaps some others might just fall back on the insurers to, to make that assessment or, in other countries NOTAMs or, you know, there's, there's less quantitative ways to, to do this. And that was one thing that stood out to me.

Libby Bahat 7:46

The, the, w- you mentioned how the insurers, and it's, it's again something that people don't realize how many are involved in the decision to send flights to a certain destination. And, and it's not just the, airline manager, the CEO. we're looking at unions. We're looking at of regulators, the regulator of the destination country, regulation of the origin, the regulator of that specific operator. you said, we're looking at insurers. The engines sometimes are not owned by the airline. They have owners. They are leasing them. The aircraft are not always owned by the airlines. They have an opinion. we're looking at almost, we, we calculated to a certain extent, but eventually more than 10 that are involved in, in making the decision to fly somewhere. Not to mention, eventually it's a business. Airlines have to make money. they have to have passengers. is there a demand? How many tourists are flying to Israel in the middle of the war? a- airlines might, might tell me, "Libi, we're good with your, safety assessment. We're- we think it's sound, but we don't have passengers wanting to go there. we'll call you back in the summer when we have a lot of tourists, not right now." so we've been talking in the CAA with, with many, many, it's our interest. if we see ourselves as serving the Israeli public, we want to make sure ourselves that the right information in the right context getting to all the decision-makers. we were talking a lot with insurers. the way, funny thing about insurers, they work only with numbers. I think we'll go, over this data again. But assuming we have a 99% success rate of intercepting missiles, when a missile penetrate, don't see this as a major event. They say, "Yeah, this, this was calculated with the numbers. this was predictable. don't see any changes that, that we need to make to the insurance." Unlike the general public the pilots that see, "Hey, something happened. The missile penetrated, hit next to Ben Gurion. Something's wrong." And the insurance guy will say, "No, nothing wrong. We knew this all along." very interesting points of, of view.

Lessons from the past that inform wartime decision-making

Jim 10:09

this is a terrific conversation. wouldn't think you'd have to have this conversation, but we do. before we get into the details of what you're doing in a dynamic wartime situation, decades of experience do you bring to this in a non-military conflict that you had to deal with day-to-day, let's say, in the past, whether it be dynamic NOTAMs or dynamic no-fly zones? how did you use that experience and apply that to your dynamic wartime decision-making that has to take place?

Libby Bahat 10:42

it sounds like I'm bragging, but, but it's actually, I, I, I use the word unfortunately. Unfortunately, Israel has been at different stages of conflict and war since the day it was established. And the basic structure since 1948 when Israel was established, a very small country, a huge air force, 90% of the airspace controlled by the air force. due to different, reasons, some of them budgets, the civilian units are sitting, in some cases, inside the military, the air force unit. So the basic structure of Israel, civil and military coordination is combined, is, is, I think might be one of the strongest connections in the world. It brings us as CAA, when I put my CAA hat on, a huge headache. I have to license, multiple radars to the same unit, the, resting time of the controllers, their qualification, the communication, array. So it brings us in peace time a huge headache, in, conflict time, this cooperation is, is unbelievable. throughout the years, we built SIDs and STARS, for example, so departure procedures and approach procedures, just for the, event of a conflict. So runways that are not supposed to be used for takeoffs or landings, we have approaches and departures from them just in case something will happen. We have, ground infrastructure ready. We have, aviation, aerial infrastructure ready. we do multiple exercises a year. again, I'm very, sorry to say, we have, in the last 10 years, we have a big conflict every two years that affected Ben Gurion. so very, very unfortunately, our controllers are extremely experienced, and the ground crew, in Ben Gurion is extremely experienced. redundancies have been built through, from, from day one. I think you all heard how, the Iranian attacks, were very, very inefficient in terms of casualties. Israel had around 30 casualties from, a couple of hundreds of missiles. house in Israel in the last 50 years has to have a bomb shelter. If you're living in a skyscraper, if you're living in a, in a flat, you have to have a bomb shelter, a concrete room. the infrastructure in Israel, and, and of course, that includes the airport itself. So- you could see, these, mitigation measures to the risk were being inside the Israeli system, you could say from the day Israel was established, and I think much more intensely, since the, Protective Edge operation in 2014. That was the first, conflict in Gaza that affected Ben Gurion. so, so this is maybe the answer to, to your question, how did this experience, got us to the place we are right now?

What is the intent of modeling wartime risk to airlines

Luka 13:50

What really is the intent of this r- risk modeling and managing, commercial air traffic in a, war zone effectively? Is this an exercise to truly try to understand and quantify the risk, and then use that as, as a basis for, for decision-making support for all of the, parts of this ecosystem? or a more cynical view would be, hey, are we doing this to have something that we can fall back to and avoid, accusations of negligence down the road in a, in an event of a loss?

Libby Bahat 14:24

I don't think we're, we are, there. obviously we try to document everything we do. I think everyone is, is, know it's kind of a strange world, but I try to do the best thing for Israel. I know a Zionist is, is not a simple word for listeners, but doing the right thing for Israel, and Israel is very different from, from many countries in the world. It's kind of like an island state. It- we're kind of like an island. we have minimal relationships with our neighbors, and we don't have a train service to Europe to, the neighboring countries. Israel economy, Israel connection to the world rely on, civil aviation. So we try to balance that need. And, and it's not money, it's not, answering to the, to our ministers, to our government that, that want to see Ben Gurion open, because other- otherwise that's allowing the enemy to win. The enemy wants Ben Gurion to be closed and Israel to be disconnected from the world. but again, we did close Ben Gurion, in every conflict we had with Iran for many hours, for nights, full nights, and this conflict, we closed Ben Gurion for a full week, no one entering or leaving. So we do understand the responsibility. we were under a lot of pressure. but I think, and then the, and then I have to give all the credit to, the CAA senior management, our director general and so on, and, and, and the other, management for, not giving up to all those pressures and, and doing the right thing for safety. I think we're talking a lot with, with colleagues from the FAA, from the EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency. I think we get, a good feedback, obviously from operators, from major air operators around the world, Lufthansa, the American big three. and, and I think if we got it wrong, we would have, we would have known. So I feel, we're doing a, a decent job and, and yes, keeping safety at a, at a very high level.

Data and uncertainty

Luka 16:38

How do you know, in your model when you quantify the risk of, interception debris and interception zones and missile penetrations, et cetera? I think I've read in the materials that you've shared that you assign about one to 2% probability of a missile penetrating this defensive layer. Where does that number, actually come from? how wide are the error bars on that?

Libby Bahat 17:02

So first of all, the-- God is in the little details and, and numbers, although they are numbers, it's very, ver-very important. What was your question? So a success rate. Let's say we're talking-- The, the general assumption is the pub-- in the public, in the media was that Israel has, around ninety-five, ninety-nine success rate of interception. but you could ask this question in so many ways. Are we talking about, Protective Edge? Are we talking about Epic Fury? Are we talking, at which timeframe exactly are we talking about? What is a success and what is a failure? If a missile is, not being intercepted because there's an aircraft on final. It happened in, November twenty, twenty-three. the Air Force is not allowed to intercept, ballistic missiles if there's any chance it will-- the interception will affect a civilian traffic. So it was not intercepted. This was the policy. Is this a failure? You could say it's a failure. Missile hit next to Ben Gurion. If an Arrow missile hits, you, you know, dis-dispersive, bombs, this cluster munition the Iranians have. if the Arrow 3 that's designed to hit the full, the big rocket hits its target, but the missile did manage to send out its, its small bombs, is it, is it a success or a failure? So first of all, it's very, you have to be very precise talking about these numbers. However, all of the nu-- these numbers is not relevant to civil aviation. This is not close to the numbers that we want to have we talk about safety of civil aviation. We're talking about to the minus nine, ten to the minus seven, eight, and so on. These is-- are the numbers. We're starting to talk about one to a billion. So if it's ninety-five percent, ninety-nine or eighty, it doesn't matter. in the CAA, and the same goes for, for our air navigation service provider, the Israeli Airport Authority, at every missile launch as if it will fail, 'cause ninety percent is simply not good enough for civilian flight. and we take all the measures as if this, missile will hit. So we clear the airspace in the air. We do whatever we can with the passengers. and yes, obviously, when we look at the results, you could say we have a wonderful success rate of, of interception. That's obviously, very good. But that's not the main mitigation measures, when we protect passengers in Ben Gurion.

Luka 19:37

Is this exercise about airlines second-guessing the aviation, civil aviation authority as to whether to fly to a given area? and if so, why second-guess the government aviation authority in this case? Does that imply that airlines should start second-guessing the aviation authorities in other areas as well, including, when the subject matter is weather or IMC or, or IFR?

Libby Bahat 20:03

the, the question is, is clearly yes, the airlines should make their own safety assessment as well. When, a passenger wants to fly from, A to B, he has a couple

Luka 20:17

a couple

Libby Bahat 20:18

decision-makers or stakeholders that are, that have something

Luka 20:23

but perhaps something to safety.

Libby Bahat 20:25

there is

Luka 20:26

so it's never-- it's actually never, so it's never really been, uh, to go ahead

Libby Bahat 20:33

or

Luka 20:34

or even

Libby Bahat 20:35

that

Luka 20:35

really, change what is currently the

Libby Bahat 20:38

I-- obviously, we see this as, as great help, as an additional, factor that will s- I, I don't know if, if there's another term for second-guessing, but to validate what we did and, and look at it closely. yes, and they do that with, with multiple other factors, and they have been doing it for, for 100 years. ICAO, the International Civil Aviation Authority, which is a, a UN, United Nations agency, checks every country in the world, 192 countries, and puts grade on every factor. They have eight, they call it the eight critical elements. It's legislation, organizational, personal licensing, operationals, and so on. And everyone in every civil aviation authority that has access to this data, I don't think it's that classified, can see exactly how does ICAO rate every single factor of, of those eight critical elements. And an, an operator, when an airline asks me, "Hey, what do you think about the risk in Ben Gurion? how high is it when flying, right now in the recent conflict?" And, and eventually the conversation goes to, "Hey, do you guys fly to Albania, Seychelles? Do you kn- did you know that their, legis- their organizational, rate from ICAO is, is, very, very low, that their ground infrastructure is, you could say, dangerous?"

Luka 22:06

I understand the framework, but it doesn't strike me as a fair comparison where on the one hand the ground infrastructure might be bad or, you know, organizational procedural-wise, there might be elevated risk versus, interceptors and drones and, and, you know, air defense systems engaging in a relatively dense airspace such as the Israeli airspace. but, you know, what you do bring up is, is so very true. from your position, you're trying to assess the risk in an environment that is, well, number one, relies on data that is very often classified. the performance of the, of the interceptor systems, air defense systems, that's not something that you can just pull, you know, off the shelf to inform your models for good reasons. So that's one layer of uncertainty. And then, then there's the aspect of the threat picture changing, especially, in this new technology-enabled, warfare that we're seeing. new threats are emerging, on a weekly basis almost, which makes it very difficult to rely on any past data, e- even whatever you might have to make your decision. And importantly, you will never know, whether your model is right or wrong until it's too late. and so in light of all of that, how do you honestly calculate these probabilities and tell airlines, "Yes, you're good to go. Come and fly," without fooling yourself in a way?

Libby Bahat 23:29

A couple of, of, of, things you should know about the, the people that are involved and the way our s- our, entire system, our ecosystem is, is working. first of all, most, if not every single one of, the management of the Civil Aviation Authority and many of our employees, and the same goes with the air navigation service provider, have, quite a dignified military knowledge. and of them, again, if not most of them, still do reserve service. And that's true for technicians, that's true for controllers, that's true for pilots. throughout the-- this ecosystem, it's, never, a hum- someone that, was updated, 20 years ago and, and stopped being updated, since then. So have people that have pretty good, qualifications, you could say, and pretty good background to, to understand the information. That's one thing. The second thing is, is, the way our crisis management team works. So whenever a conflict starts or might start, management team meets, if needed, a couple of times a day, s- at least, once a day. And this conflict management team is being run Both by knowledge that the Air Force personnel come personally and share this information, as well as other agencies in Israel, and obviously the air navigation service provider. So for this example, Ben Gurion, Airport and management bring their information, and the decision is being taken after you have all the information from all the stakeholders on board. So, the, the, the fact is that we do have very updated, very, current information in front of us. we use scientists from the top Israeli, security and, and, and biggest companies. Some of them manufacture some of those weapon systems. they themselves do reserve service. So the-- starting from the personnel itself and the s- the system, the way in which decisions are being taken assure us that we have to all the information we need. is being updated, the risk models are being updated by th- those scientists sit in those, crisis management teams and, and, and we use them a lot. So, we do have all the information, we need updated, by the minute.

Strategic considerations

Jim 25:56

let's, talk a little bit about the process, from the strategic to the tactical, let's say. how much do you already know, Libby, well in advance, let's say by company, by country, by, all the different variables that go into this decision as to, how to treat different types of aircraft given their origin, let's say, or destination. much of that is known strategically well in advance? and how much of your decision-making is tactical, whereby of course you have the, the threat you have to be able to consider. what other information is being exchanged in near real time for you to be able to make a decision on how to treat different types of aircraft, if from different origins, from different manufacturers, from different engine manufacturers? Explain that process from strategic to tactical. Is that a fair question, Libby? is that something you-

Libby Bahat 26:51

a fair question is measured by, how good the answer is. the,

Jim 26:55

that.

Libby Bahat 26:56

scene around Israel is- hasn't changed a lot. No one was, we say, I don't know if it's a term in English, fell from his chair when, when the conflict with Iran started. So we had, you could say, a lot of time to prepare. The conflicts with Gaza again ongoing. A, a conflict with Lebanon, boom, it happened. so I think it's fair to say that, that strategically, we knew where we were going to. We didn't know exactly if it's going to happen next year or next month. at least we didn't know officially. But, we could prepare, and we could exercise, and we did that a lot. We exercised a lot on different scenarios. And yes, the scenarios, are pretty obvious. So we had time to assess what will happen. we know both officially and unofficially what to expect with a conflict from Hezbollah or with a conflict with-- from, Hamas. With a little bit of physics, we know how, long is, a flight of a ballistic missile from Iran to Israel. We know 2,000 kilometers. The speeds are not very, changing. we know we have 12 minutes. and now we can assess, okay, the, let's try. We have a barrage of three. By the way, not every missile from Iran is directed at Ben Gurion. Um, a scenario when we have a lot of aircraft in the TMA, uh, on the ground, a- and so on and so forth, and, and we, we had a lot of time to practice. We made a lot of changes to the airspace. If you will open our, en route, our routes map, 15 years ago, it's very different than it, was updated just a couple of years ago. So we could fly... When we had the conflict with Hezbollah, use routes which is north of Ben Gurion. We could use routes that went south of Ben Gurion, not the usual routes. would-- that, that comes to Israel once a year or once every couple of months doesn't know anything is going on. Okay, he's been assigned to a different route to enter Ben Gurion. we knew these routes are, are not the normal ones, so-

Jim 29:10

All right, let, let me slightly edit my question. I like your answer. Let me slightly edit it, you're going down a path that makes me wanna ask this. how much of the behavior and your management and handling of different aircraft are a function of who they are and where they're from and, and who the owner of the aircraft is, and who the owner of the aircraft engines are, for example? How much variability takes place based on those considerations as opposed to missile threat, availability of the airspace, availability of different routes?

Libby Bahat 29:46

okay. First of all, obviously, tactically, everyone is treated the same. So just that, that's one thing. I can say that we will, use different energy and when we allocate our resources, I had, Giora Romm, our previous director general, that, that says, look at the, most, the, the worst outcome you can say when, when you assess risk, what's the worst, thing that could happen, and then you would know where to put your, your energy. I'll try to, to, get myself reminded of, the, professional term. But now we're coming down to what is civil aviation and who am I protecting, and to what extent? So I, I am taking your question, the same amount of, of protection or mitigation measures for a civilian flight with 300 passengers, if you compare it to a medical evacuation helicopter a firefighting, this is civilian aviation as well. now we're, obviously all the, everyone in the crowd and, and the general public would say, medical evacuation, they have to take risks, and, and yes, firefighting, they're saving lives. They have, we have to take risks." now we're getting a bit, what about repatriation flights? What about, photography that are needed for infrastructure? is there... And, and now to something even more delicate, is there a difference between, the Lufthansa with 300 passengers and Lufthansa Cargo? Is a cargo flight with two pilots, is it the same I do the risk calculations and my risk assessment, it the same like a 300 passenger flight? Um, and that's where we think there's not one solution that fits everyone.

Jim 31:39

Speaking of collaborative decision-making, how are you in real time communicating to the different operators the risk levels? How is that decision-making taking place, and how are they communicating back to you, those that may be willing to lean in versus those that may be a little bit more cautious? how is that taking place in a CDM process, Libby?

Libby Bahat 32:01

first of all, I think, again, from what I hear from, from colleagues around the world, I think Israel is the country that has the most communication with the airlines in the world. In this situation, have been exceedingly transparent and communicative with the airlines, and a lot of, of, of colleagues told us they haven't seen anything like it before and that we were the first in the world to do it. the second a conflict starts, and, and we did it again for 10 years now, we are sending out looking for the relevant, decision maker or the relevant personnel, in every operator, in e-every airline, in every regulator around the world, we have our communication list, and we have our, our, people, the colleagues around the world that we collected bit by bit, and we're actively talking to them. So we're sending them emails sometimes once a day sa- and, and some of that, by the way, it's in our, CAA website. You can check it out yourself. It's called Aviation, Civil Aviation Authority Conflict Update. Okay, tomorrow we expect, a reduction, in the threat. we will allow 50 passengers on departing aircraft. we will allow three aircraft on the ground at, at a single, point in time." and again, the, the-- one of the most things that, that it's very hard to put things into perspective and into context, very easy to say, "Okay, there's a, a risk of, let's say, one in a billion, that a missile will hit Tel Aviv." Okay, how is it compared to the risk yesterday, to the risk in the last couple of, of months? How is it compared to the ground, the normal ground risk and the normal risks in, in Ben Gurion? Is the conflict getting, quieter? Are we looking at something that's getting more drastical? So putting things into context, explaining firsthand to the

Luka 33:58

Not only the pilot

Libby Bahat 34:00

uh,

Luka 34:00

and the crew only, but when I first presented the to us, it was suddenly not

Libby Bahat 34:06

not mad at an airline that decides not to fly to Israel. 'Cause we knew, okay, we gave them all the information, and now it's very logical to, make every decision, you want. But we-- it's very, very important to us deliver the information directly from us.

Diving into the risk model

Luka 34:23

Libby, let's talk about the risk that you mentioned now and, drill into the weeds a little bit. One thing that I kept getting stuck on when I was looking at the risk model that you shared with us is that if you, if you follow that all the way down, it really collapses to a single recommendation, which is, hey, if you wanna minimize the risk, then minimize the time on the ground where you have passengers and fuel on the aircraft. the discomfort that I have with that recommendation is that it is also the one variable that you can actually control as the authority. Clearly you can't change, the type of threat. You can't change the intercept doctrine. You can't change the weather. You can't change the debris pattern. but you can change the schedule. So from the outside, I can't tell whether ground time dominates the risk from a, you know, physics first principles perspective, or is it just, the nail that you have found for your hammer, so to speak, right? I, I think the term, is the streetlight effect, where you're optimized for what you can touch. and so the model responds to that even though it might not be the primary sensitivity le- lever. what do you think about that?

Libby Bahat 35:35

first of all, I do have other factors I do control. when the defense on Ben Gurion is, is taking shape and we are looking into a conflict and deployment of, of a certain defense system, again, we are working together with the military to make this, the optimized defense possible. And yes, I can to c- not the CAA personally, but we can work together with the Air Force and, have them optimize where the debris are going and where the defense is more, you could say, liberal or less liberal, thus do affect the, the, for example, the rate of interception and yes, where the debris will fall. So, it's not, from 30% to 100% obviously, it's not, not something that I totally, not control. Other things I can control, is for example, the numbers of passengers on board, for example, the numbers of aircraft on the ground. and every- we can talk about each and every, figure, and we use that. At certain stages of the conflict, for example, we allowed only three or two aircrafts, even

Luka 36:50

So even though at some point and development will do it. And it's not only the,

Libby Bahat 36:55

on the

Luka 36:56

and the driving of the people involved that can make it better. But sometimes it gives the capability, it gives the drive to adopt a certain way.

Libby Bahat 37:05

it

Luka 37:06

And also it gives the motivation to

Libby Bahat 37:08

when

Luka 37:09

and adopt methods and drive young people to open to the draft. And yes, those draftings are not always practical in

Libby Bahat 37:15

this

Luka 37:15

the real. the real, this is the way I can you as as a leadership team, which I have and I love, networks, and I have many

Libby Bahat 37:24

on an

Luka 37:25

types of ways. And you know that this building will be acting and growing in the future. And I'm very much a part of that.

Libby Bahat 37:32

the way, I don't know

Luka 37:33

But we know oftentimes we heard where, practices and,

Libby Bahat 37:36

on the

Luka 37:37

news around the Hudson, the captain Sully first practice, right? Always one of the first pieces of realize is to

Libby Bahat 37:44

pilots, these were professional passengers. These were passengers on a, on a ferry flight to Philadelphia doing this early morning, doing this couple of times a week. So you didn't have young kids, grandpas and, and ha- Hawaii vacationists. And the same thing with Israel in this situation. We have, at these

Luka 38:05

From the use of the ocean, going back to what we established. So now the only, uh, thing is that we know.

Libby Bahat 38:12

it's a

Luka 38:12

so to evaluate this, to evaluate this, number, we need to remember in that we need, uh, to to first, find the specific number that we are trying to know. First, what is, the current application, or the overall collaborative decision management? The original philosophy was

Libby Bahat 38:31

and to have passengers board an aircraft only when we know or the management knows that aircraft will not queue for takeoff, and his gate when he's arriving to Barcelona will be available for him

Luka 38:46

I don't disagree that this is a lever to minimize risk. My question was is this the lever that the model should boil down to, right? And, and one way to, to stress test this, if instead of you being a regulator, you ran, Israeli's air defense, would ground schedule be your primary lever that you minimize the risk with? Because that's what, the model flags, hey, this is the recommendation, minimize the time on the ground, and hence you interpret this as, the, the source of risk. Whereas if you ran air defenses, then it might be about, Shahed doctrine or, optimizing, one of a half dozen other things to minimize risk

Libby Bahat 39:28

So, so I shared with you one model that, that deals with the ground risk. We have other models. I mentioned it, models that, look at risk on the air. I shared with you how it's not just ground time, but it's only evacuation procedures, number of people on the aircraft, number of aircraft on the ground. So it's not the, the only factor. And I also explained how working together with the Air Force, we to some extent also can affect the way interceptions are being made, deployment of, of the interception system is being made. So we do have control over this factor. But eventually, again, this is case scenario. we know we have an active, a very plausible, likely threat on Ben Gurion, we close the airspace. didn't allow flights in Ben Gurion for, weeks in the beginning of the war. So yes, having a very small ground time is an additional factor. not the only one. Um, and we control it pretty good. And yes, it's important, but, but it's, absolutely not the only

Worst case scenario

Luka 40:35

I see. Libby, what's the worst case, scenario here? Let's, let's assume the aircraft is on the ground, passengers are aboard, there's a launch that occurs during that window, an interception happens directly overhead, debris falls, on the airport, We cover the probability, but y- you know, if this happens, what does the airport actually do in those minutes, and what part of that scenario still keeps you up?

Libby Bahat 40:59

obviously the worst case scenario is the one that should not be mentioned when we look at Harry Potter. Um, the-- we, we divided the situation into, very specific stages of the flight. So, and again, this is not something we did from this conflict. This was on for more than ten, ten years. we have stages when the aircraft is on the air, f- long final, short final. is it safe to ha- to, to, for a controller to tell an air- an aircraft that's on minimums, so I don't know, 200 feet above ground to go around? Maybe it's more dangerous, maybe it's better to let him land. taxiing in, connected to the air bridge and, and the same on the way out. So the airport management has, very good and detailed procedures what to do in every situation. This was exercised many time, in exercises and drills, and unfortunately in reality. so v- very, generally, if the air- aircraft is connected to the air bridge, it depends how many passengers there are on board. obviously, when we have very few passengers on board, the safest course of action is to have everyone go to the shelters. Again, we have pretty, a decent alert time. it's, it's-- it gives you a couple of, of, of possibilities to do. when the aircraft is taxiing in or out, the main, or, one of the risks we are, looking at are FOD. Um, the, the-- looking at the, conflicts that we had before, we're lo- not looking at artillery with a th- with, with hundreds of rockets at the same location. We're looking at one ballistic missile. has certain amount of, of debris and, and the risk of actually getting hit you're sitting inside the airplane is, is, is small. by the way, you saw we analyzed even what's the size of a debris that it takes to actually penetrate, the aircraft. You're, you're not totally exposed when you're sitting there. And, and so we're, we're looking at the FOD issues. When, when we have an, an, an interception overhead, we will generally not allow the, the flight to, we'll tell to stay put. We will not, allow it to continue taxiing in or out, 'cause we want to check that its immediate surrounding, doesn't have any debris that will be sucked into the engines or, make them have a flat tire. so, so this is very generally either boarding, unboarding, stopping at, staying put until the area is cleared. the air, you're

The risk of misidentification and friendly fire

Libby Bahat 43:36

good

Luka 43:36

So, okay, Libby, what about modeling a remote chance of friendly fire? your model doesn't account for that. and, under normal circumstances, yes, misidentifying an airliner is essentially impossible, but we have had examples in the past, where those situations happened. you know, one was a, a Ukrainian 737 that was flying from Tehran to Kyiv in January 2020 that was shot down by an air defense crew that was in high alert, and who misidentified it and engaged it. and you know, when you look at the Israeli airspace right now, there's civil military deconfliction problem, y- you're basically running into it every day. And so what, structurally prevents a similar incident occurring in Israeli airspace?

Libby Bahat 44:26

I think we discussed this when, when we discussed, or, or parts of it, how well embedded and connected are the civilian systems and the, military systems. when you have this level of cooperation and this level of intimacy, when you have pretty much the same personnel doing reserve and then, returning to their civilian job, ATC or military controllers, missile system operators, so even starting with the personnel level, you have a level of intimacy that's extremely high. about how sometimes controllers, civilian and military, sit shoulder to shoulder. we're looking at the military picture that's fully identified. We're not looking at a remote Iranian SA-6 station that's not connected to the civilian aerial picture, doesn't have a target at, 300 knots written all over it, is Ukrainian three five, seven five kn- two." so the technical systems are there, the procedures are there. went through over how, this, the, the ecosystems are generally the same one. We're not almost to some extent in a c- state of conflict. We're not looking at the civilian control system and a military control system. it's, it's almost combined. I told you, it, it brings a lot of headaches in, in peace time and a lot of trouble to look into ICAO standards of a, a picture way of, of doing things. communication, navigation, surveillance and so on. But it's priceless in, in the situation of a, of a conflict. I think, very... I don't know how to say it, softly. The value of human lives in Israel, in the Israeli Air Force, the Israeli military, is, I think, pretty different than the, states that we saw, bringing down civilian aircrafts by accident. So when we're looking at, at, at militants in the Ukrainian area, Russian militants, and we're, we're looking at Iranians, I think Israel, with all due respect, is, is a different country. Again, we have the systems, we have the personnel, we have the exercises, have the, the ongoing cooperation that's, that's simply unique and doesn't exist in, in any, any other country

Luka 46:56

The one thing that I would push back on, and I, y- I acknowledge, your arguments, but also let's not forget Iran Air, 655. I think it was in 1988. it was a, an A300, that was shot down by, by the US Navy. and this was a USS Vincennes. They had the best air defense system in the world. They had the Aegis radar. and they mistook a climbing A300 on a scheduled route, for a descending F-14 that, that's about to attack the carrier group. And so, modern integrated air defense system, transponders available, exceptionally, trained crews, a country who cares a lot about lives, as you mentioned. And if we connect that with some of the other unfortunate events in the past, those did not happen because the technology couldn't identify. It happened because of needing to make a, an interpretation under intense time pressure. And so layer onto that GNSS interference, which in Israeli airspace is an active condition, and, you know, it paints a picture that, hey, these things can happen, not because of how well-trained or equipped people are and how integrated the civil and military ecosystem is, but it's just human nature. especially in a time deficit And so, how is your environment, not technology, not the people, but the environment, how is that different?

Libby Bahat 48:23

I, a couple of things. first of all, the, I'm not, extremely, with extreme knowledge about, the case with, with the American carrier group, but Ben Gurion is not an asset is claimed to be or, or is possible to be attacked by a, a, a fighter, by an aircraft. And, the- again, not knowing exactly how well the civil military coordination was, it's much more than just being the, the, having the possibility to look what he has on his Mode A. It's a lot more than that. It's knowing someone identified this aircraft. is handling this aircraft. The controller knows who this, aircraft is. so you... There are a lot of aspects that are, different. I think the, the, Israeli, case is, is very, very different. Going into GNSS interferences, I don't think it, it has a big impact. It might have some impact, but I don't think it has a big impact on the misidentification issue. Israel, again, has been, well aware of GNSS interferences for many years now. Our radar system, the aerial pictures that, that the controllers see is, is not dependent on, on GNSS. looking at some, cases using both civilian radars and military radars. the, the navigational aids, the ground navigational aids that aircrafts have to navigate are, are there and maintained very well. and the controllers are very well, know extremely well what to do in these situations. It's almost, normal practice to have, no GPS in, in Israel. Changes when the conflict is hotter, more or less, but everyone here is extremely experienced and, and it has a, a minimal effect on, specifically on the misidentification issue.