#111 Libby Bahat, Israel Civil Aviation Authority: Flying civilians into a war zone

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 aviation authority make its own war risk call. Most regulators don't have to do this. Israel does, and Libby is the guy. We spent most of the conversation not on the war but on the judgment underneath it: where the numbers actually come from, how wide the error bars really are, the levers a CAA actually controls, the friendly-fire failure mode etc. Libby was honest about what he wishes he had ("I wish I had a criteria, like an engineer, very specific numbers") and about what he doesn't get to have. It's a rare look at how a serious regulator reasons when the only data point that would prove him wrong is the one he's organized his entire career to never see. 03:36 Flying into a conflict area 10:09 Lessons from the past that inform wartime decision-making 13:50 What is the intent of modeling wartime risk to airlines 16:38 Data and uncertainty 25:56 Strategic considerations 34:23 Diving into the risk model 40:35 Worst case scenario 43:36 The risk of misidentification and friendly fire 50:19 Why some airlines decided not to fly to Israel 53:53 Advice to the aviation industry