Explosions in the sky woke Cory McKane on Saturday, turning a quick visit to Dubai before a friend’s wedding in India into a tense, multi-day search for a way out of the United Arab Emirates as the Iran war expanded.
Faced with limited options, McKane and his friends eventually drove a rental car to the Oman border, where taxi drivers were charging up to $650 to take people to Muscat International Airport. The journey to Muscat took 10 hours but paid
off: McKane secured a last-minute flight to India, arriving Wednesday sleep-deprived but relieved.
Hundreds of thousands of travelers found themselves similarly stranded in the Middle East after Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Saturday and Iran struck back on Gulf states as well as Israel. With much of the region's airspace closed and airstrikes intensifying, governments from North America and Africa to Europe and Southeast Asia continued their race Wednesday to bring their citizens home.
Officials chartered jets or deployed military aircraft to route stranded travelers through Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which emerged as key exit points since airplanes still could land and take off from those countries.
A plane carrying French citizens from Oman and then Egypt landed in Paris early Wednesday, the first of several expected repatriation flights organized by France's government. A group of students returned to Italy after their government evacuated them from Dubai. More than 200 people from 16 countries departed Iran by land through neighboring Turkmenistan despite the former Soviet country's strict visa policies.
While repatriation efforts gained momentum, many travelers faced the choice of waiting or trying to secure seats on the diminished number of commercial flights operating.
More than 23,000 of the roughly 44,000 flights scheduled to fly to or from the Middle East between the start of the war and Thursday have been canceled, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Flight-tracking service FlightAware reported more than 2,400 flight cancellations worldwide on Wednesday, down from about 3,150 on Monday.
France estimates about 400,000 of its citizens are in parts of the Mideast affected by the conflict, either as residents or travelers, President Emmanuel Macron said.
Eleonore Caroit, the minister responsible for French nationals abroad, said about 100 seats on the country's first evacuation flight were reserved for vulnerable passengers, including families with children, older people and those with medical conditions.
Two more flights were expected Wednesday — a military aircraft carrying 180 French citizens from the UAE city of Abu Dhabi and a charter bringing 205 people from Israel.
“Our goal is to help repatriate as quickly as possible the French people who wish to return,” Caroit told French broadcaster TF1.
The U.S. State Department vowed in an X post on Wednesday to help evacuate Americans. Earlier in the week, the department told U.S. citizens to leave more than a dozen countries using any available commercial transportation options.
“Any American in the Middle East who wishes to leave: call the State Department and we will get your home," the post said, adding that 18,000 Americans had so far safely returned to the U.S., including 8,500 on Tuesday.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that nearly 280 citizens had so far been evacuated.
Britain said a charter flight would depart Oman late Wednesday to bring back some of the thousands of U.K. nationals in the Gulf.
The U.K. Foreign Office said more than 130,000 British nationals in the Middle East had registered their presence with the government since the conflict began Saturday, though officials said not all are trying to leave.
Ireland’s foreign minister said Emirates airline would operate a flight from Dubai to Dublin on Wednesday. Foreign Affairs Minister Helen McEntee said an estimated 22,000 to 23,000 Irish citizens were in the Middle East. The Irish government said it also planned to charter a flight for about 280 people from Oman in the coming days.
Norway’s Foreign Ministry said it was sending an “emergency team” to Dubai to reinforce a Norwegian Embassy team that was helping an estimated 1,500 Norwegians registered in the city.
South Africa's Foreign Ministry advised its citizens to take advantage of the limited commercial flights after putting its own plans to evacuate citizens from some Middle Eastern countries on hold due to airspace closures.
In the Indonesian resort island Bali, about 6,000 people were stranded because their flights to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Dosha, Qatar, were canceled, officials said. Many of those affected were tourists from Europe or the U.S. trying to fly long-haul via those Middle Eastern airports.
Airspace closures and restrictions remained in place Wednesday across most of the Middle East, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24. Notices from Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria said the countries' no-fly zones would last until at least early next week
The United Arab Emirates’ airspace is partially closed, and Saudi Arabia continues to partially restrict routes near its border with Iraq and along the Persian Gulf. Israel prepared for a phased reopening of its airspace that would allow arriving flights returning its citizens starting early Thursday. Jordan lifted its previous nighttime flight ban, restoring 24-hour operations.
Some of the aviation notices governing the closures allow authorities to reopen or restrict portions of airspace on short notice depending on security conditions, meaning flight schedules can change rapidly as the conflict continues to unfold.
Commercial airlines have resumed limited service, but seats filled quickly. British Airways said its flights scheduled to depart Muscat through Saturday were fully booked and that it would add service “if we are able to.” Etihad Airways and Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, said their commercial flights were still suspended due to regional airspace closures, although both airlines operated a small number of repatriation and cargo flights.
Li Qian, a 44-year-old tourist from Hangzhou, China, has been stuck in Abu Dhabi with her family. She said she received repeated missile alerts on her mobile phone and saw smoke rising near areas they had visited.
“It was frightening ... We just want to get home as soon as possible,” she said, adding that she worried about her mother’s high blood pressure medication and her child’s return to school.
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Yamat reported from Las Vegas and Rico from Atlanta. Associated Press journalists Samuel Petrequin in Paris, Sylvia Hui, Brian Melley and Bridget Virgo in London, Jamey Keaten in Geneva, Gerald Imray in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Alexander Vershinin in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, contributed to this story.
