Ben Gurion Airport was the most disrupted airport in the world for departures on Friday morning, with delays averaging between 70 and 90 minutes, almost 24 hours after a wildcat labor strike drove a wave of cancellations.

Overall, when taking into account both departures and arrivals, the airport was the 10th most disrupted airport globally, data from Flightradar24 showed.

The airport was expected to return to normal operations over the weekend, though employees had fully returned to work by mid-afternoon on Thursday.

The “surprise strike,” which the Histadrut labor union denied having called, came as a result of workers’ complaints relating to insufficient personnel to handle the influx of passengers during the August vacation rush. Staff left check-in counters unmanned and incoming flights were halted, causing massive delays.

The Finance Ministry estimated the cost of the strike at some NIS 30 million ($10 million), according to Hebrew media reports.

Yiftach Ron Tal, head of the Airports Authority, told the Ynet news site on Thursday: “I’m glad to say, the airport is returning to full operations, and even beyond that. We’re ramping up the number of departing flights, and will be doubling them in the coming hours.”

“I’m very hopeful that by morning, we’ll have reached a point where the airport is functioning normally,” he said.

One Israeli airline, which remained unnamed, told Kan late Thursday it expected operations at the airport would take about 24 hours to return to normal.

Thursday had been expected to be the........

© The Times of Israel