[8] The airport began during the British Mandate for Palestine as an airstrip of two unpaved runways on the outskirts of the town of Lydda (now Lod), near the Templer colony of Wilhelma.

Holland's KLM, which had since 1933 stopped at Gaza en route to Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), moved the service to Lydda in 1937.

In 1944, as the German threat in the Middle East subsided, Aviron Aviation Company initiated service four times a week between Lydda and Haifa.

Within a decade, air traffic increased to the point where local flights had to be redirected to Tel Aviv's other airport, the Sde Dov airfield (SDV) on the city's northern coast.

In the first incident, on 8 May 1972, four Palestinian Black September terrorists hijacked a Sabena flight en route from Vienna and forced it to land at Ben Gurion airport.

Sayeret Matkal commandos, including Benjamin Netanyahu, led by Ehud Barak (both future Israeli Prime Ministers) stormed the plane, killing two of the hijackers and capturing the other two.

[12] Later that month, on 30 May 1972, in an attack known as the Lod Airport massacre, 24 people were killed and 80 injured when three members of the Japanese Red Army sprayed machine gun fire into the passenger arrival area.

[14] More buildings and runways were added over the years, but with the onset of mass immigration from Ethiopia and the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and 90s, as well as the global increase of international business travel, the existing facilities became painfully inadequate, prompting the design of a new state-of-the-art terminal that could also accommodate the expected tourism influx for the 2000 millennium celebrations.

[17] The furthest nonstop flight to have departed the airport was a private Airbus A340-500 owned by billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson who flew on 2 January 2017 to Honolulu on a route over the Arctic Ocean.

From there, passengers proceeded upstairs to the main departures hall, which contained passport control, duty-free shops, VIP lounges, one synagogue and boarding gates.

At the gates, travelers would be required to descend a flight of stairs to return to the ground floor where waiting shuttle buses transported them to airplanes on the tarmac.

The arrivals hall with passport control, luggage carousels, duty-free pick-up and customs was located at the south end of the building.

Chartered flights organised by Nefesh B'Nefesh carrying immigrants from North America and England use this terminal for their landing ceremonies several times a year.

Firstly, the public halls have a Land-of-Israel character with walls painted in the colors of Israel's Judean, Jerusalem and Galilee mountains.

[21] In February 2006, the Israel Airports Authority announced plans to invest 4.3 million NIS in a new VIP wing for private jet passengers and crews, as well as others interested in avoiding the main terminal.

Work on Natbag 2000, as the Terminal 3 project was known, was scheduled for completion prior to 2000 in order to handle a massive influx of pilgrims expected for the Millennium celebrations.

This deadline was not met due to higher than anticipated costs and a series of work stoppages in the wake of the bankruptcy of the main Turkish contractor.

The overall layout of Terminal 3 is similar to that of airports in Europe and North America, with multiple levels and considerable distances to walk after disembarking from the aircraft.

The upper level departures hall, with an area of over 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq ft), is equipped with 110 check-in counters and as well as flight information display systems.

A variety of cafes, restaurants and duty-free shops are located there, open 24 hours a day, as well as a synagogue, banking facilities, a transit hall for connecting passengers and a desk for VAT refunds.

In December 2017, the IAA announced a long-term expansion plan for Ben Gurion Airport estimated to cost approximately NIS 9 billion.

[47][48] Israel Aerospace Industries maintains its head office on airport grounds as well as extensive aviation construction and repair facilities.

[vague] A 24 million NIS renovation project completed in February 2006 reinforced the runway and made it suitable for wide-body aircraft such as Airbus A380.

However, none of this original layout is visible nowadays since as usage increased and aircraft types and needs changed over the years various runways on the airport's premises were built and removed.

This presented a problem, however: the fact that these two runways intersect near their western end creates a crisscross pattern between aircraft landing and taking off.

With passenger traffic projected to increase, plans were drawn in the 1980s and 90s for the extension of runways 03/21 and 08/26 as a means of alleviating some of Ben Gurion's safety and capacity concerns.

Occasionally, if security assessed a person as a low risk, they were passed straight through to the check-in desks, bypassing the main X-ray machines, a practice which also drew some discrimination complaints.

Commercial flights from Sde Dov Airport which, until its closure in July 2019, handled more domestic passengers annually than TLV have been moved to Ben Gurion.

Israel Railways operates train service from the airport to several parts of the country and taxi stands are located outside the arrivals building.

A popular transportation option is a share taxi van, known in Hebrew as a monit sherut (service cab), going to Jerusalem, Haifa, and Beersheba.