I N CALMER times the flight from Dubai to Beirut ends with stunning vistas of the hills of Damascus and the mountains of Lebanon. But for years the airspace over Syria has been crowded with warplanes. The Gulf airlines no longer use it. Instead Emirates, the flag carrier of Dubai, detours across Saudi Arabia and Egypt, adding 700km to the trip. The journey takes even longer on Qatar Airways, which was barred from Saudi airspace after a dispute between the Gulf countries erupted last year. Its route from Doha to Beirut resembles a crook: north over Iran, west across Turkey and south down the coast. What should be a 1,825km flight drags on for 2,865km.

The best way to visualise the Middle East’s many conflicts is, literally, from 30,000 feet. Because of wars and political disputes, large bits of the region are off-limits to passenger jets. A straight line between Cairo and Amman is about 500km. That line crosses north Sinai, though, where Egypt is fighting an Islamist insurgency. Pilots fly south to avoid it, adding an extra 190km to their trips. Libya and Yemen are beset by civil wars, complicating routes to Africa.

Since most Arab countries do not recognise Israel, their airlines avoid it. Even the national carrier of Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel 40 years ago, skirts Israeli airspace. (It operates a daily flight to Tel Aviv via a subsidiary, Air Sinai, often on an unmarked Embraer.) Royal Jordanian is a rare exception, but it cannot cross Israel en route to Lebanon. As the crow flies it is 220km from Amman to Beirut. As Royal Jordanian flies they are 1,070km apart, an almost circular route that dodges both Israel and Syria. El Al faces similar restrictions: to reach Asia the Israeli carrier flies all the way down the Red Sea, to the Horn of Africa, before turning east.

For travellers this is a nuisance, adding an extra hour or two to journeys. But for airlines it imposes real costs. Qatar Airways posted a $766m profit in the 2017 financial year. In the 2018 financial year (which ended on March 31st) it lost $69m. Operating costs were up by 15%; passenger numbers were down 9%. “We didn’t raise the ticket price,” says Akbar al-Baker, the CEO . “We had to absorb the additional cost.” Emirates and Etihad, the flag carrier of Abu Dhabi, run five daily flights to Beirut. With the detour around Syria, they log an extra 2.7m km every year. Depending on the aircraft, that means up to 19m litres of additional jet fuel, about $11.4m at current prices.