The ticket machine was the red sort you find at a cheese counter, bolted to the arrivals barrier at Tel Aviv's airport. By mid-afternoon it had given out nineteen numbers, one for each camera crew waiting for the passengers of FlyDubai Flight 1073.
Those passengers had, by their own account, endured a frightening flight after a suspect allegedly attacked a pilot and tried to bring down the plane. The aircraft reached Tel Aviv. The press, being the press, reached the barrier first.
I first watched this ritual decades ago, when one man with a notebook asked one weary traveller whether she had been scared. She said yes. He wrote it down and went to the bar. The question has not changed since, and nor has the answer. What has changed is the queue, which now needs crowd control, a numbering system and, judging by the coffee cart, its own catering contract.
A producer clutching ticket nineteen explained the rules.
