Patrick Comerford
Despite all my heightened fears anxiety, I didn’t find myself hanging around in Muscat International Airport in Oman last night or this morning. I left our flat in Kuching early on Thursday morning for a two-hour flight to Kuala Lumpur, and then to Muscat on a delayed seven-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur in the middle of the night. The delay left me with only minutes to spare before (breathlessly) catching my third flight – an eight-hour journey to Heathrow – and arrived in London early this morning.
Door-to-door, from Kuching to Stony Stratford, it was a 38-hour odyssey, and I feel washed out and exhausted this evening.
I had flown this route only two weeks previously, in the opposite direction, and had no hint at the time that all would not be well in the Gulf and the Middle East on the way back.
In normal times, before this conflict erupted a week ago, Muscat has been an alternative for perhaps more discerning travellers who preferred Oman to Dubai and its glitzy skyscrapers, brash brand-and-label shops and an overpowering, overwhelming commercialism. The World Travel and Tourism Council says Oman is the fastest growing tourism destination in the Middle East. Until last week.
Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is the oldest independent state in the Arab world, ruled by the Al Bu Said dynasty since 1744. It has a population of almost 5.5 million people, a land area of 315,331 sq km, and is in the south-east corner of the Arabian Peninsula, sharing land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Muscat is the capital and the coastline of Oman faces the Arabian Sea to the south-east and the Gulf of Oman on the north-east.
Oman has been better known to tourists for its postcard beaches and green mountains. But in the past week, Muscat has become a major hub for a very different kind of visitor: people stranded by the closure of airspace across the Gulf and the Middle East and who are willing to pay a premium to be evacuated from the region.
The British government has chartered a number of planes this week to evacuate tourists and exiles who have found themselves trapped in the Gulf, and many are making their way from the United Arab Emirates to Oman. The drive from Dubai to Muscat takes about five hours, and it is now a busy route for people hoping to escape a long and arduous stretch of time in an increasingly tense Gulf area. Flights out of Dubai have been cancelled, as debris from Iranian missiles and drones rains down on the airport and on the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah.
I travelled late at night from Kuala Lumpur to Muscat on Oman Air, which has increased flights from Muscat to Europe to accommodate stranded and fleeing travellers, and it is also running buses to bring them from the United Arab Emirates.
UAE airspace has been largely shut down to commercial flights since Saturday, stranding tens of thousands of business and leisure travellers in Dubai. The fluidity – and the danger – of the situation is triggering fear among many visitors in Dubai. Large numbers have been forced to extend their hotel stays, there us panic-buying of food and medicine, while they look for alternative ways to get out.
In the last few days, Austrian Air has flown people out from Muscat, and the Italian defence minister was picked up by the air force in Oman, where he travelled by land from Dubai.
Many of the people who have been flocking to Muscat this week seem to have access to large funds and paid extortionate demands to evacuate by land to Oman and then fly out by private jets while UAE airspace is closed. It all comes at an extraordinary price: one report says fast-track transfers to Oman now cost $5,000 per car, with some families even paying anything from $150,000 to $200,000 to be evacuated.
World governments are also trying to evacuate passengers through either Oman or Saudi Arabia. The first flight carrying Irish people who were stranded in Dubai arrived in Dublin a few days ago.
One American businessman I spoke to was travelling to Chicago, and found himself marooned without a flight, unable to book alternative options or the possibility of finding an hotel room. An English couple whose flight from Thailand to Muscat was delayed were left sleeping on the floor in the airport with no hotel rooms available, and believed they may have managed to get one of the last pair of seats on last night’s flight out to Heathrow.
An hotelier I was talking to said hotels in Muscat know they can charge what they want to these nights, and also fear the present crisis may have put an end to tourism in Oman for a long time to come.
Emotions and fears aside, I was prepared to find I was stuck in Muscat late last night and early this morning, with no idea when I might get out of Oman. I had decided to pack light, with only one small back pack, and at the time did not realise how wise that was going to be.
I had a boarding pass and my seat number. My anxieties may have given me enough adrenaline to run through the airport and reach Gate C6 with just three minutes before boarding began. There wasn’t even time to log-on to the airport WiFi and message Charlotte to say I was safe and boarding or to post that on Facebook. Had I not caught the same flight by a hair’s breadth, I wonder how long I would have been left waiting for a seat on already overbooked flights.
Tensions were running so high that a number of full-grown adult, mature men had a stand-up shouting match in the aisles of the plane during last night’s flight, and it took a lot of persuading from the cabin crew before they were seated again.
Unable to sleep, I spent most of the flight playing computer chess and watching the flight path on the screen in front of me. The Oman Air flight out two weeks’ ago had crossed from Turkish into Iraqi airspace, and then flown across Iran and across the Gulf to Muscat. On the return journey last night, the plane was redirected across the Arabian Peninsula and Saudi Arabia, then over the Sinai Peninsula, Cairo and Alexandria, then Chania in Crete, the southern Peloponnese, Kefalonia and Zakynthos, then across Italy, Switzerland and France.
I have slept much of this afternoon at home in Stony Stratford, comforted by the sound of the bells of Saint Mary and Saint Giles next door striking out the quarter hours and hours. I may well have been just one among the 25,000 Irish people who are said to feel they are stranded in the Gulf this week.
Charlotte faces a similar journey next week. Hopefully it’s not going to be as arduous
