Anyone else in Dubai on holiday? AIBU to be panicking with all the flights cancelled?

[tiantian1005]

Not sure when we can go home..anyone has managed to for example drive to nearby countries and fly from there?

Some flights are supposed to resume this evening.

Kuwaiti air defenses mistakenly shoot down three US fighter jets. All six American crew members safely ejected and were later recovered, military says.

Whoops.

Might not want to do that to an airline plane.

Shambles

Bearing in mind what's been happening today, I'd be very surprised.

The UAE’s civil aviation authority said it will begin operating 'special flights' across the country's airports to allow the departure of stranded passengers, the state news agency reported on Monday.

The authority urged passengers whose flights have been impacted by the regional developments not to proceed to airports until they have been contacted and notified of their flight timings and details by their respective airlines, in order to avoid congestion and ensure smooth processing.

Dubai Airports said "limited" flights would resume on Monday evening, three days after flights were first cancelled due to the war in the Middle East.

"Dubai Airports announces a limited resumption of flights from Dubai International Airport (DXB) and Dubai World Central – Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC) starting this evening, Monday, March 2, 2026," it said in a statement.

Official confirmation of this available here for any in doubts about it.
https://x.com/i/status/2028470980935557464

If I were in Dubai I'd be joining that queue at the airport already

Probably not the best plan. Even if the risk of reopening the airport has been assessed as acceptable, it seems a much more likely target than whatever random hotel or apartment you were in previously. And heading to the airport without a confirmed seat on a flight would be against the advice of UAE authorities, who have "urged passengers ... not to proceed to airports until they have been contacted and notified of their flight timings and details by their respective airlines".

Reading some stuff up on how much the Israelis claim to have degraded Iran in two days is pretty damning for Iranian capabilities and how long it can keep up attacks.

Israel has lived with the threat of missiles/ drones for years and since the Gulf war they and the US have been working to perfect detection and destruction of launchers to an art. They already had targeted a lot of sites in attacks on Iran earlier last year alone prior to US involvement.

Each wave of Iranian attack since this conflict started has apparently got smaller suggesting a good success rate in taking them out and there's now reports of military facilities in Iran being abandoned. Both are reasonable assumptions and probably likely under circumstances.

If as suggested by one commentator this is happening it's a massive difference to previous conflicts:

The difference now: persistent ISR from space-based sensors, AI-assisted targeting, and F-35 sensor fusion creating kill chains that compress the detect-to-destroy timeline from hours to minutes. The mobile launcher that once survived by relocating between launches now gets struck during erection sequence

Detection in minutes by using AI on satellite images to spot anything that looks like a drone or missile launcher once you have established air superiority and can patrol and respond accordingly very quickly, is going to be a game changer. You can't hide anything and you can't escape from aerial response. (I wonder if the Ukrainians are feeling particularly pissed off at this point)

The interception rate was already put at 93%.

Whilst it's probably going to be a while to deal with everything, this would suggest theres enough of a growing confidence to allow some flights to resume.

I wouldn't be going to the airport though. It still remains an obvious target and they will need to manage those people there in case of that possibility of one of those 7% of attacks slipping through. Not to mention it'd be a prime target for other forms of possible retaliation, overcrowding issues and just general unhelpful chaos which will ultimately slow the process down.

It's definitely sounding a lot more promising than it was and yes there's a drip drip of information which sounds confident coming from pro Israel and US sources which wouldn't be happening if there wasn't a sense of yeah things are going the right way.

To lose three jets points to the fact that perhaps US training is lacking and or communication is abysmal

There’s also the fact the Gulf States follow a different sect of Islam to Iran.

30 Tennis players who had been competing in the Dubai Open Semi Finals and Finals apparently opted not to be driven 10 hours to Saudi, or 6 hours to Oman. The latter airport was closed at the time. Medvedev, Griekspoor, Rublev and the British doubles player Henry Patten are all affected. It means that they will probably have to miss Indian Wells.

Perhaps they can join the F1 teams.

Or the anti aircraft systems aren't working as well as hoped. There's no indication of when these loses happened too. Was it Saturday? There was a notable shift in defensive tactics on Sunday.

It’s usually the Americans who are the experts in friendly fire.

That is probably true for the mid range missiles which can reach israel - even now it's less intense than in June- but doesnt bode well for the gulf states in range of drones and short range missiles. If they cant hit israel, they may focus on the gulf.

It's about taking out capabilities. If they stuff the skies nothing can move for now but they can't maintain that level of patrol and surveillance.

And yes there may be an element of calculation about moving people now whilst they can with this in mind too.

I wonder, does it look better to say shot down by friendly fire or shot down by the Iranians 🤨🤨

“Gas prices to soar by 45%. “
Well at least the heating season is pretty much over.

TBF might be a stuff up at the Kuwati end...and whilst it shouldn't happen just about every nation has done something similar.

It's petrol and diesel prices that's referring to as far as I'm aware and it won't affect anyone on a fixed contract if prices did increase.

And tbh even then it's unlikely drones will have been stored individually. They will be in storage areas. So every drone sent will be trackable backwards to that point. Or to production. You can't hide a factory easily either. Too many components going in. They'd need to keep a sight 'clean' and not resemble other sites in order to remain undetected.

They are not small objects. So even with a reduced response time to the Gulf the majority of the threat should be limited in scope.

Its just a matter of time. And there's a finite number going to be available.

Number one thing I would not recommend doing in Iran right now - travelling about in anything big that AI might mistake as a vehicle capable of transporting anything big enough to be a drone.

Every drone used in the middle east is a drone that cannot be sold to Russia to be used in the Ukraine. Ditto with manufacturing capacity lost.

I doubt the authorities would let anyone inside the airport building without proof of flight time and passport paperwork and there would likely be enhanced security checks even at entry points.

Qatar has just had a thwarted attack.
There is no way the airspace is opening now.

Qatar has also just shut down an oil refinery.

They have rebooked their villa for another week and if flights aren’t happening then, they will look at other options. Also depends on what the insurance will cover, especially as the airline has rebooked them on flights in a week.