Oh gosh I never noticed Sardinia being misspelled on the map! Just a proofing error I guess. Lucky that it’s a very unimportant territory for the game.
I think the design is very clear here. Forces sent to the Western Desert have to go through the long multi-turn pipe-line to reach Egypt. Otherwise, air units can be placed in Gibraltar (though the stacking limits are very restrictive) or they can be added to any of the active Allied convoy zones, including the permanent one by Malta. Allowing UK air units to be placed at Cyprus would be a balance change in favor of the UK, you could play with it as a house rule but I think it was excluded intentionally.
