BOZEMAN — I never imagined my family trip to Dubai could so quickly turn into a mission to get back home. But that’s exactly what happened.
“Anytime we hear a sound, even if it’s the air conditioning, we’re like, oh my gosh, what’s going on? Like, what is that?”
That is what I told my colleague Meghan Elaine last week when I was in Dubai, while we were discussing what it was like to be in the United Arab Emirates amid escalating conflicts in the Middle East.
From constant noise coming from the sky to emergency alerts, there was a lot of uncertainty.
As tensions continued to rise between the U.S. and Iran, leading to airspace closures in Dubai and the U.S. Consulate being hit by a drone just three miles away from where my family and I were staying, we knew we needed to get out as soon as possible.
But that was no easy feat.
So, how did we go about it?
WATCH: One reporter's journey home from Dubai
First, we headed to the Emirates Airlines office to see if we could get help, but after waiting for hours, we found out nothing could be done until our flight out of Dubai was officially canceled.
It was canceled two days later.
Then, we figured out that our best option for making it home was to fly out of a different country, where the airspace was still open.
Hours of searching and refreshing our screens later, we were able to find flights out of Oman to Turkey on Thursday, where we could then connect back to the U.S.
And then began the long journey home.
We took two different taxis and buses to make it from Dubai to Muscat, Oman, which ended up making that part of the journey more than seven hours long.
My sister and I then headed over to the Muscat Airport, where lines were long as it seemed everyone had the same idea.
After a six-hour flight to Turkey, I had a seven-hour layover before I got on a 13-hour flight to Denver. I finally made it back home to Bozeman around 9:30 p.m. on Thursday night.
President Trump said in a press conference on Monday that the war in Iran is “pretty well complete.”
But other Montanans, including Steven Simpson, who MTN interviewed last week, are still stranded in the Middle East.
According to the Dubai Airport, flight operations have partially resumed as of Saturday. We will continue to provide updates on the war in Iran.
