A travel expert has explained when flights to and from the Middle East might resume. Currently, airspace closures mean hundreds of thousands of passengers remain stranded following the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
Dubai, Doha, and Abu Dhabi handle around 500,000 a day in total. Not only is this massively disruptive for people looking to fly through the Middle East in the coming days, but thousands of people remain stuck.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, travel and aviation expert Alex Macheras says the situation is likely to remain difficult for some time to come. He said: « Airspace will not reopen while there is activity or the risk of future activity. We really need a hardline reassurance in the industry that this situation is over in order to resume operations, and we are not there yet, not anywhere close.
« But the uncertainty is there because they are unable to tell these passengers how, when or if they are going to be able to get them out as long as the skies remain closed. This is why we’ve seen the reporting about potential land routes using land borders through Saudi Arabia, which remains open. »
UK-based aviation consultant John Strickland said “hundreds of thousands of people” in Dubai or other Middle Eastern hub airports “weren’t supposed to be there”.
He added that spaces on direct flights to and from Asia were filling up quickly due to high demand for flights which were less likely to be disrupted.
Macheras said that UK travellers were being offered flexible options regarding their future travel plans. He said: « These airlines have introduced policies where if you are still at home, for example in the UK, and your journey is in two or three weeks, you are able to go in and refund, whether you booked directly with the airline or if it’s part of a package for example or with a travel agent.
« You can go in and refund; they’re being very flexible about it with this. So that’s those who are yet to travel.
« Those who are already there and were caught up in this, perhaps in transit, and there are tens of thousands of people affected here. The exact number the UK government are looking at is close to 100k. They are being looked after, that’s the crucial thing, number one.
« So these states, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, they are pretty good when it comes to hospitality in these scenarios in a crisis and passengers are being taken care of in hotels with meals and whatnot and so that’s kind of one thing off the list. »
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