"Refusing to Handle You"

Back before I retired from Tower Air, we used to do something similar
quite frequently. I was on the B747-200 and a route which I did quite
frequently was JFK to LLBG (Ben Gurion; Tel Aviv, Israel). Due to range
constraints on the -200, we would not be able to legally file LLBG as
our destination, due to inadequate fuel reserves. Due to this, we would
file for LGAV (Athens, Greece) out of JFK, and approximately 500 NM
from LGAV, if the weather was good at LLBG, and we had the fuel to do
it, we would refile for LLBG. If the weather or fuel situation was not
good, we would land at LGAV, and fuel up then continue on to LLBG.

In the many years that I did this, Eurocontrol never once gave me any
trouble about it. It's a perfectly legitimate way to go about your
business while in the IFR system.

Lynne