On June 23, I left Málaga, Spain at 4:05 pm, beginning what I thought would be a long but straightforward journey home to Australia.
Like many others travelling through the Middle East that day, I had no idea that international tensions would soon throw global air travel into chaos.
Roughly five hours into our seven-hour flight to Doha, with just over two hours to go, our pilot informed us that Qatari airspace had been abruptly closed following a missile strike on a U.S. air base near Doha.
We were being diverted to Istanbul, Turkey.
After landing, we remained on the tarmac for around five hours.
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The cabin crew did their best under difficult circumstances, but it was a tense and uncertain wait.
Eventually, with the airspace reopened, we continued the journey — another 4 hours and 35 minutes — finally touching down at Hamad International Airport at 6:30 am on June 24th.
The arrivals terminal was eerily quiet, but just beyond passport control, the situation was very different.
For passengers who had missed their connecting flights, it was chaos. Queues for help desks stretched endlessly, with many seeking rebookings, food vouchers, or even a place to sleep.
Some sources online suggest that there were upwards of 25,000 passengers stranded in the airport during this time.
I was one of the luckier ones. My connecting flight to Sydney had not been cancelled, just delayed, and upgraded to a much larger aircraft to accommodate the overflow of stranded travellers.
I boarded a Dreamliner alongside passengers from flights originating in cities like London, Edinburgh, Dublin, and Paris.
Several of them had been in the airport for over 30 hours with no access to lounges, hotels, or sleeping pods.
We shared stories, snacks, and a sense of weariness that only international travel under extreme circumstances can bring.
Our flight, initially scheduled to depart at 8:05 am, finally took off around 2:00 pm.
The 14-hour leg to Sydney was long but uneventful, and we landed just after 1:00 pm local time on June 25th.
To their credit, Australian border staff were kind and efficient — perhaps knowing what kind of ordeal we’d just endured — and within half an hour I was out of the terminal and back at my car, ready for the third leg of my journey home, the much more familiar Hume Highway.
Compared to many others affected by the regional unrest, my experience was a mild inconvenience.
I was safe, rerouted, and relatively well looked after.
But the disruption was a powerful reminder of how interconnected and fragile global travel can be — and how quickly a single event can ripple across the world.
For now, I think I’ve had enough of airports.
My suitcase is unpacked, and I have no plans to fly again anytime soon.
