I read an article a few years back about fuel tanking procedures for U.S. and European carriers for flights to the Middle East. Basically, they have evolved sophisticated procedures to deal with this, because of the instability of the region. This meant that they could deal with lack of fuel availability at stations like Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, TLV, Amman, Baghdad, Nicosia/Larnaca, etc. by tanking or planned diversions. In the case of TLV last week this was a technical, not a political/logistics situation but I'm sure they had procedures in place. Now long-range aircraft can carry enough fuel to get to practically any European destination without problems, but in the old days they set up arrangements for fuel stops at Cyprus, Athens, Istanbul, and Rome. -- Michael C. Berch mcb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx