Thanks Jake, really good find and really interesting why they need to do seismic "research" in the middle of the desert what is more it looks it was worth "building" an airstrip there so very likely they use it frequently eventhough not much information is available on the internet

I wanted to ask the very same question. So far this is the only answer, why is the downvote? Is it not true? Based on some common sense I would have guessed the same thing. It would be just impossible to operate new types (new type for an airline, not necesseraly a brand new type for everyone) because there would not be sufficient captain "supply" if Jan Hudec's answer was not true.

As a sidenote there is notion called ETOPS which may modify the optimal flight path (along with the weather), depending on the aircraft and airline and they may need to use different routing because of ETOPS certificate

just like in good old days when they had the famous all around the world route :) youtube.com/watch?v=Z1iOWJIdIRo&index=122