I am booking flights for a holiday in Yemen in a few weeks. Since I am in Prague, a number of options are available, but most have bizarre routings. I am considering departing from a nearby airport and connecting by train as Prague has limited options.
From travelocity:
BUD-TLV-AMM-SAH (rt) 25h 40m, including 9 hours in Israel and another 9 in Jordan. TLV?! Are they mad? Shouldn’t the system know to not book TLV on flights to SAH (among many others).
AMS-KRT-SAH (rt) 18h 25m 10 hour stop in Sudan… lovely.
PRG-FRA-RUH-SAH / SAH-DOH-AMM-BEY-AMS-PRG Gee, can I stop anywhere else? How can it come up with this?
ZRH-TUN-CAI-TAI (Taiz, Yemen)-SAH / SAH-CAI-FCO-ZRH Who comes up with this stuff?
I did eventually find PRG-IST-SAH for a good price (on the Turkish Airlines website)… probably the best option, and absolutely better than what travelocity suggests.
So…
Why would travelocity book a flight to the Arabian Peninsula with a connection in Israel?
Surely there are better options than making 4 stops between Sana’a and Prague… very curious how this works (as I am a software developer).
You can see a list of incoming flights for Sana’a on Wikipedia. There aren’t many direct flights from Europe; the only airlines departing from Europe are Lufthansa (from Frankfurt) and Yemenia (Frankfurt, London, Marseilles, Paris, and Rome). If you’re willing to get a train to any of these cities, you can catch a direct flight. Otherwise, you’ll have to fly to one of those cities, or to another city on the aforementioned list. This list of destinations from Prague’s airport may help. I can see several possible connections which aren’t too far out of the way, such as PRG->CAI->SAH, PRG->FCO->SAH, PRG->DXB->SAH, PRG->DAM->SAH, PRG->IST->SAH, PRG->BEY->SAH, and PRG->FRA->SAH. Some of these you can do one leg on a low-cost airline like Smart Wings. If you go through Frankfurt you can make the entire trip with Lufthansa.
I’ll have you know that Ben Gurion international is a perfectly decent airport. I mean, sure, 9 hours is a long time, but there’s free wi-fi and excellent duty-free shopping. Why are you getting so worked up about it?
Most Arab countries won’t allow you in the country if you have an Israeli stamp in your passport, or if it is otherwise obvious that you have recently travelled to Israel.
Exactly - as soon as I tried to enter Yemen with a ticket that was routed through Israel, I’d be on the first flight home. Why it even allows this routing is beyond me. I am sure the airport there in Tel Aviv is nice, but I don’t think the Israelis would like all the Arab stamps in my passport and I am quite sure the Yemenis would not appreciate an Israeli stop-over.
Actually, the Israeli authorities would be happy to stamp a seperate, detachable page, to prevent problems in traveling to Arab countries. They do that kind of thing all the time.
I know they will stamp a separate paper, but I think it would be awkward checking in at Sana’a if my ticket showed I was passing through TLV. I also do not want to put myself through explaining Syrian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Iranian and all the Gulf Countries’ stamps in my passport. I am pretty sure it’d be more than “Welcome to Israel, have a nice stay.”
I feel the same way about my visits to the US, tho since I am a citizen I have family reasons to visit there.
