Wretchard from the Belmont Club attends a conference in Israel and discovers the oddities of air travel to the little Middle Eastern country.
The reason direct flights to Israel from Asia were so expensive lay in the simple fact that airliners could not transit Pakistan nor the Arabian Peninsula and essentially had to fly around them. That explained why it was easier to fly through Europe then backtrack than to take the Silk Road express.
Lesson number one. Israel is not a normal country and what international friends it has is very important. If the route through China, Russia and Turkey were closed the trip would be even more of a hassle.
