Middle East flights resume, but many travelers stranded : NPR

FlyDubai planes are parked at Dubai International Airport on Monday. Many airlines, including several in the Persian Gulf – including those based in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Doha in Qatar and others – have reduced commercial flights for security reasons following the US and Israeli bombings in Iran.

Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images

Limited flights from the Middle East resumed Monday, but hundreds of thousands of travelers are still stranded at the region’s main air hubs following attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel.

Tourists and business travelers hunkered down in hotels and airports across the Middle East, waiting to find out when airports would reopen and whether flights to and from the region could return to a normal schedule.

“We’re waiting to be able to leave. Our flights keep getting canceled,” said Kristy Ellmer of Portsmouth, NH. She went to Dubai last week for business meetings and is not sure when she will be able to leave.

“We have flights booked every day of the week and Sunday was canceled. Monday was canceled. Tuesday was already canceled. And so, I’m kind of hoping that the Wednesday flights will stay,” Ellmer said in an interview.

Emirates, one of the world’s largest airlines, announced that it would resume operations on “a limited number of flights” on Monday evening. “We are prioritizing customers with earlier bookings,” the airline said in a social media post, but warned that all other flights remained suspended until further notice.

Airlines canceled more than 3,400 flights in the Middle East on Monday alone, according to a report by flight tracking site Flightradar24, bringing the total number of cancellations since the start of the war to almost 10,000.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha airports are major hubs for travel between Europe and the Americas, Africa and Asia. Airports in all three cities claim to have been targeted by Iranian strikes targeting civilian and military sites in US-friendly states in the Persian Gulf region.

Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, said operations had resumed with “a small number of flights” on Monday evening, just days after a video posted on social media showed passengers fleeing through smoke-filled corridors after a suspected drone attack.

Abu Dhabi Airport also resumed “partial operations” on Monday, according to a social media post. Flights on Etihad Airways, another major carrier based in Abu Dhabi, appear to be among the first to take off, according to Flightradar24. Flights to and from Doha’s main airport “remain temporarily suspended”, the airport said.

It’s unclear how many international travelers remain stranded in the region, but an average of about 90,000 passengers pass through the region’s main hubs each day on just three airlines — Emirates, Etihad and Doha-based Qatar Airways — according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Airspace or airports in the region were closed over the weekend, according to flight tracking sites and government agencies. Many more cancellations are likely in the coming days as airstrikes and counterattacks continue.

This is leaving stranded travelers around the world scrambling to make alternative plans.

“I deal with uncertainty all the time,” said Kristy Ellmer, whose work as a consultant focuses on helping clients navigate transformation and change. She says it helped her keep her own situation in perspective.

“We lost some service members because of this. There are people who are living in much worse conditions right now because of this conflict. We are staying in a good hotel that takes care of us,” Ellmer said. “So I think keeping that perspective also helps me be calm.”