As I’ve written about, I have plans to transit through Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi next month in order to fly the three A380 First Class products of the three big Middle East airlines. Plans were all in place, and even with the war between Israel and Iran raging, the airlines who had been routing across Iran, Iraq and Jordan on their way to and from the Arabian peninsula had rerouted to dip south and cross Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Then, earlier this week, missiles were launched from Iran toward a US base in Qatar in retaliation for the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. In response, first Qatar, then the UAE shut down their airspace, forcing many planes to divert or return to their origin point. Obviously, safety takes precedence, but many people were stuck in the wrong airport. The UAE re-opened fairly quickly and Emirates and Etihad managed to avoid a major disruption. Despite a longer shutdown in Qatar, Qatar Airways managed to overcome most of the issues in a couple of days and things are returning to (relatively) normal. In fact, Iran has even reopened the airspace in its Eastern half, although it seems most airlines are still avoiding Iranian airspace altogether.

During the few hours of the closed airspace, I briefly searched for alternative flights from Bangkok to Abu Dhabi or from Bangkok back to the US across the Pacific in case Doha had a longer term disruption. Thankfully, I didn’t need to take any further action, but I did see a few possibilities should things flare up again before my trip next month.

For now, at least, it seems that there’s a ceasefire in the region and all flights are running fairly smoothly through Qatar and the UAE. My trip is moving forward as planned and I look forward to getting a bit of time in both Dubai and Doha along the way. This week was just a reminder that you always need to be aware of world events causing disruption when planning international trips.

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