Originally Posted by
andrasz
Respectfully, in GCD you're correct. However should you care to make the effort, I suggest you have a look at the published mandatory entry points and routes over Syria, and you will find that the shortest distance you may do BEY-AMM along the published airways is a good 50% more (~320 Km) than the distance BEY-LCA (~210 Km).
My bad, sorry didn't check that.
Thanks for pointing that out
jcjeant, thanks for the L'EXPRESS link.
I can add
this one from Le Point, less "new" facts, but I understand that the alternates were Amman, Cairo & Larnaca (not only Larnaca, as stated by L'EXPRESS, even if it may have been the 1st alternate on the FP)
Apart from this detail, I fully agree with the analysis of andrasz
With hindsight, a bad decision, but I'm at last reassured to learn that there don't seem to be any kind of strict "minimum fuel policy" at AF.