Libya

Rome is easily my favourite city in Europe. I've often heard that the Roman ruins in Libya are better than those in Rome, so I've been wanting to visit Libya for some time. In 2004 I thought I had my excuse -- the FIDE World Chess Championship was being played in Tripoli in June and July. I wrote to the Libyan People's Bureau in Canberra asking how I might get a visa to this event, but they never replied. Possibly, the Libyan authorities prefer foreigners to go on group tours. I've been using zuji frequently lately to plan my trip, and today I visited the bookshop to check out how I might get to Libya if I wanted to go.

As a cheapest fare ($2000 + taxes ~ $2500), Zuji proposed a most interesting route:

Flight: Qantas Airways flight 503 - Economy Class
Depart: Brisbane, Australia (BNE) - Tue, 06 Mar at 5:30am
Arrive: Sydney, Australia (SYD) - Tue, 06 Mar at 8:00am
Connecting To

Airline Logo Flight: Asiana Airlines flight 602 - Economy Class
Depart: Sydney, Australia (SYD) - Tue, 06 Mar at 9:30am
Arrive: Incheon Int Seoul, Korea Repub (ICN) - Tue, 06 Mar at 6:00pm
Connecting To

Airline Logo Flight: Asiana Airlines flight 541 - Economy Class
Depart: Incheon Int Seoul, Korea Repub (ICN) - Wed, 07 Mar at 12:40pm
Arrive: Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) - Wed, 07 Mar at 4:35pm


Airline Logo Flight: Lufthansa flight 4120 - Economy Class
Depart: Frankfurt, Germany (FRA) - Thu, 08 Mar at 9:20am
Arrive: Tripoli, Libya (TIP) - Thu, 08 Mar at 1:10pm

It's quite ridiculous but I thought it was interesting that it went through Seoul and Frankfurt! This shows the limits of online booking services, because it should be a pretty straightforward flight Brisbane-Singapore/Perth-Doha/Dubai-Tripoli and return. Maybe zuji uses only certain airlines.