Why the war in the Middle East has me googling airline flight paths

News of a further war in the Middle East sees me both appalled at the cost for civilians on the ground and the way it’s spreading without clear objectives and unknowable consequences. And with my twentysomething daughter away travelling, I’m also spending a lot of time on airlines’ websites looking at flight paths. I wish I hadn’t.

She’s due to fly back from Indonesia later this month so it’s time for a gentle enquiry as to her intended stopover and airline details, especially with tens of thousands stranded in the Middle East and with air space closed, plans to evacuate a growing backlog of stranded people are sketchy at best.

With my daughter’s education disrupted by Covid, dyslexia and having to work full-time hours at a job while studying for a degree, I am allowed to say geography is not her strong point, but she’s up to speed now.

READ MORE: A democratic transition government for Iran already exists. It's time to end 47 years of tyranny

Smoke rises after Israeli airstrike on Beirut's southern suburbs near the Lebanese capital's international airport (Picture: Ibrahim Amro) | AFP via Getty Images

Avoiding Beirut’s combat zone

Back before the war in Gaza, it was only when we arrived in Beirut that she mentioned she’d thought our holiday was going to be in Barcelona, or was it Benidorm, but being smart and having eyes and ears she soon became better informed on what was happening on the ground in Lebanon.

“We can’t go too near the Blue Line because that’s a combat zone”; and “those kids in the streets are refugees from Syria and Palestine”; as well as “beautiful beach, well it’s the Mediterranean”, “Phoenicians, wow, they invented the colour purple and left amazing buildings”; and “best food ever, all grown here”.

Now her messages and video chats home from Australia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia are alarming on a personal level for this over-anxious parent, but also speak of a wider world beyond the tourist trail and an awareness of the privilege and freedoms we enjoy.

READ MORE: 'No information' on whether US military used Scottish airports during Iranian strikes

The most heavily bombed country in history

Apart from cute reels of cats, dogs and Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs, and doing all the things I told her not to – sky-diving, scuba diving, boarding tiny planes, surfing, tattoos, being around cliff edges, sharks, motorbikes, scooters (it looks like the only advice she’s adhered to is ‘don’t accept free shots or drink anything blue’) – there’s also an awareness that you only get from seeing things with your own eyes, something Instagram reels will never give you.

From Australia she says, “we have homeless people sleeping in the street in Edinburgh but in Australia the folk we see doing that are mostly indigenous”; from Vietnam “the women in ethnic groups in the north can earn their own money because they work with the textiles, they showed us how they do it”; and “Laos,” she tells me, “is amazing, beautiful, but it’s the most heavily bombed country in history and unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War still injure people and contaminate the land we’re on now”.

So while I google international flight paths, once I’ve got her safely home I will be suggesting that, if she feels the need to board tiny planes landing on impossibly beautiful white beaches, has she considered Barra?