Trip Home Oct 30

We left for the airport in Israel at about 345am on October 30 (Israel had already switched to standard time the previous weekend so it was only 6 hours time difference between Israel and Eastern US time). I thought it was too early because my recollection was that the airline ticketing counters didn't open until 5am and our flight didn't leave until 655am. However, Ben Gurion has apparently gone to a 24 hour operation. 

This may be just for some months since per a tourism website, October and April have a peak in tourism arrivals and the year to year trend is definitely increasing. Anyway, everything was open when we got there and everything went smoothly getting to our gate. 

We changed planes in London at Heathrow. They also have altered procedure since our latest trip through there.  Annoyingly, we had to go through security again (both coming and going) and it was a more comprehensive check (shoes off, liquids out of carry on) than at either Dulles or Ben Gurion.

Also, since we had a long wait at Heathrow coming home we used their pay-to-use premium lounges (second image). It was more expensive than the ones we had in Istanbul and the chairs weren't as nice but the view was better.  


We arrived at Dulles about 915 pm. Since the previous time we used Dulles after an international flight, they had merged the passport and customs control so we only had to wait in line once and we boarded our shuttle at about 1030 pm (and arrived at our house about 1100pm). On the negative side, before we got to passport control we still had to take a long ride in an overcrowded moveable lounge to get from our arrival gate to the international arrival terminal area.