The Vertical Space
The Vertical Space
Jim Barry, Peter Shannon & Luka Tomljenovic
#111 Libby Bahat, Israel Civil Aviation Authority: Flying civilians into a war zone
56 minutes Posted May 25, 2026 at 5:00 pm.
Flying into a conflict area
Lessons from the past that inform wartime decision-making
What is the intent of modeling wartime risk to airlines
Data and uncertainty
Strategic considerations
Diving into the risk model
Worst case scenario
The risk of misidentification and friendly fire
Why some airlines decided not to fly to Israel
Advice to the aviation industry
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Libby Bahat returns to The Vertical Space. Last time we talked to him about building an airspace for drones in peacetime. This time he's the regulator who decides whether a 777 full of people lands in a country under missile fire. As Head of the Aerial Infrastructure Department at the Israel Civil Aviation Authority, Libby is one of a small number of people anywhere who has had to build a quantitative framework, debris models, interception zones, penetration probabilities, that lets a civil a...