Originally Posted by
Mr.Nuke
This shouldn't be that surprising. Until today, the ash cloud had been essentially only affecting the North Western portion of Europe. Everything to the Middle East has been operating. They are just taking a more Southerly route. A similar routing headed in the opposite direction from TLV-EWR gets used quite a bit.
AFAIK, the cloud is going up to 25K feet. TATL flights to TLV should go above it and are not effected. It's possible they take a southern route just to make sure it does not rise above 25K.