Would you transit through Dubai?

[middleagedmum007]

I am due to visit family in Australia early next month and before the conflict started I booked a flight transiting through Dubai (2 hr stopover). I’ve contacted the airline and I can’t get a refund. Flights are still going through Dubai however the UK home office advises against all travel through the UAE and I understand that this includes transiting. If the conflict isn’t resolved I will probably lose the money (unless the flight is diverted). I can’t really afford to purchase another ticket and go through Asia or the US. I am well aware that this is a first world problem and that families in the Middle East are going through a terrible time. Any advice?

I wouldn't.

If your flights are non refundable I'd look into changing the dates until a long time in the future- thats usually possible at smallish fee.

We’re supposed to be going to Thailand via emirates next month and having to wait and see.

My concern is Emirates do the flights but the government advice saying do not travel so we wouldn’t be covered by insurance. I’m hoping insurance would cover us for the flights but not sure if it’s to do with war. We haven’t done a package holiday and our hotels are luckily all flexible bookings but our internal flights are sorted too (also going to Singapore).

We are due to transit through Dubai early April, we'd prefer not to travel but currently Emirates are not refunding beyond March. Even if safe to do so, I don't fancy hours of potential delays on an already long and stressful journey. I think it will be hard to relax on holiday not knowing if flights home will be disrupted.

We were due to transit through Dubai to Thailand on 1/4, we’ve cancelled the whole holiday. We lost £250pp to emirates as flights had already been ticketed. Feel relieved that we have cancelled and will try again next Easter.

I fly for a living. I normally avoid destinations in the ME but fly over it a lot as my preferred trips are places such as India, Thailand, Singapore, etc. The routings over the Gulf have been complicated by hostile activity for a few years now (GPS jamming and spoofing) but it’s a whole different level of shitshow now. I fly people on holiday or for business trips, not through war zones. Stories from my colleagues who have been that way recently would make your hair stand on end - today’s story was from a crew flying into supposedly ‘safe’ Saudi Arabia, but they had to hold in the air as the airport closed after another airliner saw drones overhead the airport.

I guess this shows you have to trust your own risk aversion
we are flying to Thailand 4/4 via Dubai, I would not even consider cancelling
emirates flights are rapidly reverting to normal
no right or wrong, do what you feel comfortable with

I'd give it time. Changes are being offered to those with sooner dates, so if it's not resolved by then, I suspect you;ll be offered something else/re-booking for another date.
I always think that the pilots and air crew aren't looking to go down in flames, so they're not going to be willing to staff a route they don't think is safe.
You've got a couple of weeks.....

Exactly my thoughts
if they are flying it im happy with that risk assessment

Seriously?

everyone involved in this war is an unpredictable nutter. Airlines don't have special powers to know what's going to happen week in week, day to day, minute to minute.

@middleagedmum007 not a chance. Life is shit sometimes, but I'm not ready to sign off from it yet!

I was due to fly via Dubai on Friday. I had taken a chance and booked new flights with a cancellation charge the week before and was glad I had as the price more than doubled before the flights sold out. My insurance stated as I was transiting and not leaving the airport they would cover. For me the risk of disruption was too high and we requested a refund and flew the alternative route.
I hope as your date gets closer you will be offered a refund.

Given a drone hit an oil tanker in the vicinity of the airport around an hour ago, I'd expect more airlines to be more risk averse and cancel more flights.

If you're up have a quick look on Flightradar. So many planes are circling but cannot land due to the aforementioned fire. You might be fine, you might not, but expect disruption if you do go.

Not a chance,one look at Flightradar and the amount of American Air Force planes would put me right off.They seem fairly adept at getting their targets wrong.

"I always think that the pilots and air crew aren't looking to go down in flames, so they're not going to be willing to staff a route they don't think is safe."

Funnily enough (well not really) there's little to nothing coming out on aviation related SM from crews based in the area so it was interesting to read the comments of someone like @backinthebox on this, so many thanks...

Upthread someone mentioned "risk assessement..."...

It's worth bearing in mind all the relevant airlines, not just Emirates, will have have run a risk v benefit assessment on operating into Dubai.

Dubai is Emirates home base...for them being able to operate into/out of the place is pretty much existential....that's a big "benefit" to consider in any analysis.

For the european carriers, ATM going into/out of Dubai is far less of a benefit.

End result is different operators might come out of the risk v benefit analysis with different results.

I'm out of the aviation industry now but having done the flying job and seen how this worked in reality around previous conflicts I'm personally not convinced some of what we are seeing this time around is that smart, but that opinion is based on limited info.

Personally I"d deem things to have got back to some form of normality when the likes of KLM, Air France, BA etc start operating into the major Gulf Airports again....

No. I will never go via Dubai or Doha again, even when this is over.

What is the situation with your travel insurance if you do go when the government says not to? That would be a big factor for me because I wouldn’t want to travel without insurance. We went to the Caribbean just after Christmas and something happened to the pilot and the whole flight was cancelled. Everyone on the flight had to get and pay for new accommodation bookings, food taxis (or sleep in the small airport) for two nights until a new pilot was flown in and then had his rest period.

And then there was the other end to deal with. We ended up paying over a thousand pounds when we were there and we would have been in a bad situation if we hadn’t had insurance.

According to news sources in the region, everyone is expecting the war to last into (at least) early-mid April.

I've had a lot of experience with cancelled flights during the past three years. Unfortunately because airlines don't want to lose loads of money, in my experience cancellations are often made very close to the date the flight was supposed to leave, which means that by the time you are cancelled your options to rebook are limited. If you are cancelled it's important to make clear that you want a refund rather than rebooking (they will try to offer you an alternative but I've had the alternative flights also be cancelled, which becomes a huge hassle).

As others have said, it's not so much a danger to fly (airlines are very cautious and will turn around if there is kinetic action in the vicinity - and Emirates will be extremely cautious about its safety reputation), it's more the possibility that you get stuck in Dubai or some other random location that you get diverted to.

For those that haven't heard there were some problems at DXB this AM which led to some hefty diversions to Emirates flights,.including the EK10 which left Gatwick, got as far as western Saudi before diverting back to Gatwick..

In Emirates favour that would indicate they are loading up with stacks of fuel, so keeping options open...(sadly for Emirates actually being able to do that might be an indicator they're not exactly overwhelmed with passengers).

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UAE10