San Francisco Frontiers - Thousands stranded as Iran conflict shuts Mideast hubs

Passengers were stranded around the world as airlines sought to reroute around the Middle East, where most countries had slammed their airspace shut as Iran launched retaliatory strikes on the glittering Gulf cities.

Tehran hit both the Dubai International Airport -- the world's busiest for international traffic -- and Kuwait's main airport during its retaliation one day earlier.

Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had all announced at least partial closures of their skies.

"There haven't been any other crises of this magnitude since Covid," Didier Brechemier, an expert at business consultancy Roland Berger, told AFP.

Even Russia's invasion of Ukraine did not affect the major air hubs of the Middle East through which travellers to destinations in much of Asia almost always transit, he said.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium said more than 1,500 flights to the Middle East were cancelled Sunday, more than 40 percent of scheduled traffic.

Flight tracking website FlightAware said more than 2,700 flights had been cancelled globally and more than 12,300 delayed as of 1720 GMT Sunday.

The costs are "already amounting to hundreds of millions of euros in losses for air transport," Didier Arino, CEO of the consulting firm Protourisme, said.

For some passengers, the flight disruptions went far beyond the annoyance of being stranded.

Italian rapper BigMama said she had been on a flight from Male in the Maldives which was re-routed to a spot in the desert near Dubai -- one of the cities targeted by Iran in its wave of retaliatory strikes.

"We keep hearing missiles over our heads. I’m terrified," the artist posted in a tearful video on Instagram Saturday.

"We didn't sleep a wink all night," she wrote in a new message Sunday. "We still have no news. We just want to go home."

- 'Air bridges' -

Others were in more philosophical spirits.

"I have got work tomorrow so, if my manager is watching: Johnny, I will be back later this week, hopefully," a traveller stuck at Johannesburg's main international airport told local SABC News after his Emirates flight to London was cancelled.

"I tried .. to book a ticket back with a different provider and the prices are going up every 10 minutes, 20 minutes," he said.

"I don't know where I am sleeping tonight," one passenger in Cape Town identified only as Farhad, who was trying to return to Germany after a holiday, told the Newzroom Afrika broadcaster.

"The whole world is connecting, and something that happened 10,000 kilometres away is also in Cape Town or Germany or wherever," he said.

Countries including France and Thailand have said they are looking at evacuating citizens from the Middle East.

Patrice Caradec, president of the French Association of Tour Operators (SETO), told AFP that the goal now is to establish "air bridges" via alternative hubs like Istanbul.

Arino said Tehran's attacks and the impact on air travel dealt a blow to the "soft power" of the Gulf monarchies.

"What they sell is the security of property and people," he told AFP.

"Dubai was often talked about a bit like Switzerland, so this inevitably tarnishes that image."

Explosions rocked Dubai's Palm Jumeirah man-made island and drone debris caused a fire at the Burj Al Arab ultra-luxury hotel as waves of Iranian missiles targeted the UAE among others on Saturday.

Claudine Schwartz, a 49-year-old French tourist staying at the Royal Atlantis on The Palm, told AFP that she heard explosions and saw plumes of smoke Saturday.

"We were playing night golf and rushed back to the hotel. I saw a fireball coming towards us and at the same time an alert message on our phones telling us to take shelter. We were put on the lowest level of the hotel," she said.

On Sunday they were "confined inside", she said -- but, as Tehran launched new strikes on the region, she said that from the gym, "I could see a large plume of black smoke coming from what I think was a port".

They were registered on a hotline for stranded passengers run by the French foreign ministry, she said, adding: "We're waiting."

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C.Lewis--SFF