Nov 13 2010
My Flight out of Tel Aviv, With a $60 Fee for an Empty Suitcase
For years I have succeeded to avoid it, but for some reason, I fell in the trap. I am not sure if my decision to fly out of Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport rather than my usual starting point of Amman’s Queen Alia Airport was to see if things might have changes or some crazy sadistic desire to suffer on the hands of the Israeli airport security.
I started my trip early enough, leaving my Jerusalem home at 5am and arriving at the first airport checkpoint exactly two hours before flight time. I chose to drive the car rather than my 22 year old son with the hope that my gray hair would somewhat help. Not at all. While cars ahead of us and behind us were wized through, we were asked to pull over to the side. After handing him my US passport and my and my son’s Israeli blue residency ID card, the young Israeli security guards asked me to turn off the car and give him the keys. Not sure where he thought I would have run if he I was to keep the keys. Continue Reading »