I am fascinated by this topic.

How do commercial airliners get from Point A to Point B when the shortest route takes them over politically unstable/openly hostile points C and D?

They take evasive action. That’s how.

For Etihad Airways, over the weekend, flying from Cyprus to Abu Dhabi apparently looked like this.

And why would they take that route, when it is an extra 228 miles?

Because to take the direct route would carry flight EY94 over Syria and the bits of Iraq pretty much dominated by the Islamic State, who one of these days may come into possession of a surface-to-air missile and send it skyward.

So, to avoid showing up on some crazy person’s radar, Abu Dhabi’s carrier went directly south from Larnaca, in Cyprus, over international waters, flew back over land when crossing into Egypt, made a sharp left turn over the Negev Desert, crossing a bit of southern Israel, crossed the southern part of Jordan and then went over Saudi Arabia until reaching the Gulf.

A few years ago, perhaps before Syria imploded, the direct route would have gotten us where we wanted to be in about 30 minutes fewer.

But, all things considered, the roundabout way is fine with me.

Some noteworthy concepts.

–It’s not just this Cyprus-UAE route, of course. (And it’s also not just UAE carriers.) Check this recent Turkish Airlines flight from Abu Dhabi to Istanbul. The plane flew north across Iran and then went into Turkish airspace on its eastern border. The direct route would have gone over Iraq and Syria and reduced the trip by 481 miles, according to the Flight Aware site. But better safe than sorry.

–Political considerations have been made for a long time, as Israel carrier El Al could tell you. Surrounded by enemies, Israel has been taking weird routes, when going east, for years. Check this flight path, to Mumbai. It involves staying over international waters from the moment the plane left Israeli airspace.

–The days of the pilot announcing, before takeoff, where the flight will take you, are just about over. It has been a while since I heard an announcement like that. Just sit down and don’t ask; the airline will do whatever it deems necessary to avoid incidents.

Ultimately, the down sides are limited. An extra 30-60 minutes in the air, maybe (unless you’re El Al). When making that run to avoid Syria and Iraq the other day, I actually could have used another dog leg. I was trying to watch the nearly three hours of the movie Interstellar, and I needed another 20 minutes in the air to see the end of it.