Most flights in and out of Dubai have been grounded for the past week as drone strikes continue throughout the Gulf. Photo / Sawayasu Tsuji, Getty Images
Most flights in and out of Dubai have been grounded for the past week as drone strikes continue throughout the Gulf. Photo / Sawayasu Tsuji, Getty Images
New Zealanders stranded in transit in Dubai are reportedly queuing for hours and anxiously awaiting new flights out of the region after being caught in the crossfire of the Iran conflict.
Tens of thousands of passengers have been left stranded in the United Arab Emirates after all air travelwas brought to a standstill by Iranian drone strikes last Saturday.
Reports on the ground from travellers in the city have cast doubt on the official information that has been released about the ongoing situation.
One Kiwi man, whose father Chris spoke to the Herald, flew out of Auckland on Friday last week but ended up stranded in Dubai as he transited towards Zurich.
While the man and his partner have been put up in a hotel to await a flight out of the drone strike-stricken city, the experience has been less than pleasant.
“They’ve spent hours and hours queueing,” Chris said. “They were told that they were going to be put on a flight, but if they wanted to get the flight, they had to pay all their expenses.”
Chris said this was despite the General Civil Aviation Authority of the UAE promising earlier this week to bear “all hosting and accommodation costs for affected and stranded passengers”.
“Some of the messages we get from the media or the UAE are different to what is experienced on the ground if you’re a transit passenger.”
While Emirates staff are visiting the hotel every day to assist passengers, as the Auckland to Brisbane leg of their journey was a Qantas codeshare, the couple has been met with some resistance.
The father of a Kiwi stranded in Dubai says Emirates staff were rude to his son at times because of the codeshare nature of his initial flights. Photo / Florian Wiegand, picture alliance via Getty Images
“They can’t talk to Emirates staff online or on the phones – they won’t talk to them, which is a bit peculiar,” Chris said.
He said the staff “sort of change every day, and you queue, and sometimes they’ve been rude and unco-operative”.
After falling sick with food poisoning, Chris said his son was told he needed to vacate their current hotel despite his condition.
He was later hospitalised for the illness and put on an intravenous drip, further extending the pair’s prolonged stay.
Described as a “pretty laidback”, the couple, who are in their late 20s, usually “don’t complain easily”.
But Chris said their week in limbo had been “traumatic”.
The strikes on Dubai followed a joint US-Israeli military operation in which the leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, was assassinated and the Gulf region thrown into a state of war.
“You’re not allowed outside the hotel even though there’s a pool, you can go to the gym, but you can’t leave – you can’t go outside because of falling shrapnel from drones”, he said.
“You have to queue for food for hours because I think there’s so many transit passengers.”
He is hopeful his son will be able to depart on Sunday on a newly promised flight, even if that means he must pay for his accommodation and meal expenses first.
