Israel Halts Airport Takeoffs

JERUSALEM – Supervisors at Israel’s Ben-Gurion international airport twice halted air traffic Wednesday because pirate radio stations were interfering with control tower communications.

Before midnight, takeoffs were canceled after the pirate broadcasts disrupted all the frequencies used by air traffic controllers, airport official Uri Orlev told Army Radio. He said efforts would be made to land incoming flights, but if radio contact was impossible, they would be sent elsewhere.

Earlier in the day, takeoffs from the airport were stopped for an hour. Israel Radio played recordings of calls between the tower and an incoming airliner that were blocked for five seconds at a time by the pirate radio broadcasts.

This is a “clear danger,” Orlev said, appealing to the government to put the pirate stations out of business. The problem crops up in Israel about once a month, but air traffic controllers can usually find alternate frequencies and rarely cancel flights.

“These disruptions do not allow us to run the airport as we should,” Orlev told Channel 2 TV.

Officials did not say which pirate stations were causing the interference, though Channel 10 TV said they were in Ramallah in the West Bank. In the past, pirate stations in Israel, mostly from ultra-Orthodox Jewish movements, have blocked airline transmissions.