Stranded Americans in the Middle East navigate canceled flights and confusion

Alyssa Ramos’ evacuation from Kuwait involved a 48-hour journey across four continents. The U.S. government did not help with any of it, the travel blogger said.

“They keep going on the news and saying they’re doing everything they can to get Americans out,” Ramos said after landing in Miami on Thursday. “I know for a fact they’re not.”

She said she repeatedly messaged the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and was directed to the consular section, which told her it couldn’t help her leave the country and that she should enroll in the U.S.’ smart traveler program and shelter in place.

Ramos is one of the many Americans and citizens of other countries who evacuated from the Middle East or were still stranded there Friday, almost a week after Israeli-U.S. attacks on Iran rapidly entangled more than a dozen nearby countries. U.S. citizens described frustrations and growing fear as they encountered closed airports, canceled flights and alarming U.S. government guidance while Poland, Australia, France and other countries more quickly dispatched military or chartered planes to bring their citizens home.

Chicago resident Susan Daley, who was on a work trip in the United Arab Emirates when the Iran war began on Feb. 28, arrived in the U.S. on Thursday aboard the first commercial flight from Dubai to San Francisco since the conflict started.

“Having the State Department or whoever tell us, ‘You need to get out immediately’ but there’s no help, so you’re on your own to get your own travel plans,” Daley said. “That was the most stressful thing.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed back against criticism that the U.S. response was too slow. And two State Department officials said 30% to 40% of private Americans who had been offered seats on available charter flights had either declined the seats or had not shown up for the flight.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration operations, could not say how many people that percentage range would cover, but noted that about 13,000 Americans had reached out to the department for assistance in or information about leaving the Middle East. Not all of those 13,000 had asked for or were offered seats on charter flights, the officials stressed.

The U.S. State Department said the first government-chartered repatriation flight made it back from the Mideast on Thursday and that more would arrive daily. It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were on the planes or where in the Middle East they had departed from.

As of Friday, about 24,000 Americans had returned to the U.S. since the war started, the State Department said. The vast majority of them made it home on their own through commercial means. U.S. embassies in the region continued to direct Americans to rely on commercial flights to leave.

Chat groups help people evacuating

In the absence of advice from Washington or U.S. consular offices, some travelers said they turned to WhatsApp group chats and crowdsourced tips on social media for leads on commercial flights and alternative routes out of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and other countries. Some set up GoFundMe campaigns to help cover hotel and other expenses from days spent stuck in Dubai and other Gulf cities.

Ramos started WhatsApp group chats Monday to help people following her difficult evacuation via her social media account, “My Life’s a Travel Movie,” and messaging her that they needed help getting out, too.

In three days, more than 2,200 people joined the chats about leaving Dubai, Doha, Qatar, and Kuwait. Members organized shared rides to airports where flights were still operating, passed along names of trusted drivers and listed prices and even types of currency accepted.

On Thursday, a member wrote that her husband and two children have been trying to get out of Dubai but had two flights canceled and that her 2-year-old, who is diabetic, was running out of medication. Other members immediately jumped in to offer advice.

American Cory McKane was stranded in Dubai before he caught a flight out of the region Wednesday after a long, sleepless and expensive journey to Muscat, Oman. He said he also relied on help from friends and other stranded travelers in a WhatsApp group chat.

Rather than risk the crowded airport in Dubai, McKane and friends rented a car and drove to the Oman border. There, he said, taxi drivers were charging up to $650 to take stranded travelers to Muscat’s airport, where flights were still operating.

“Everyone’s been sending each other resources because, quite frankly, the U.S. has not done a single thing in any capacity. That’s been really disappointing,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers call US response ‘unacceptable’

Jason Altmire, a former three-term Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, made it out of Dubai after the UAE partially reopened its airspace and Emirates airline resumed limited flights.

“We never heard anything from the State Department other than the general email advising us to find our own way out,” Altmire said in an email interview. “I found this, along with the ‘you’re on your own’ State Department voicemail, to be infuriating.”

In a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Democrats in Congress said that “the lack of clear preparation, planning, and communication to Americans abroad is unacceptable and a violation of the State Department’s basic mission to provide consular assistance and the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.”

Rubio said Tuesday that the U.S. had organized recovery flights but officials faced challenges due to airspace closures.

“We know that we’re going to be able to help them,” he said, while cautioning that “it’s going to take a little time because we don’t control the airspace closures.”

Commercial flight options have been limited since the war began. As of Friday, more than 29,000 of roughly 51,000 flights scheduled in or out of Middle East airports were canceled, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

But commercial air traffic is picking up. Dubai Airports, which runs the UAE city’s main airports, said it has facilitated more than 1,140 flights over the past three and a half days — and the operator said more flights are being added to the schedule each day.

Dubai-based Emirates said Friday it expects to restore its full flight network in the coming days, depending on airspace access and operational conditions. A day earlier, it flew about 30,000 passengers out of Dubai, and it plans to have 106 return daily flights operating to 83 destinations by Saturday.

Oman, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have emerged as key exit points for repatriation efforts because flights were still operating in those countries. Airspace over Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Syria, however, remained closed, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.

Azerbaijan closed the southern sector of its airspace Thursday, after it accused Iran of a drone attack on its territory that injured four civilians and damaged an airport building.

Trenten Higgins, who took a taxi from Israel to Jordan, was able to fly out of its capital and get to New York on Thursday. He said the State Department wasn’t helpful.

“Every alert that they gave and all the advice they gave was a day at least too late,” he said. “Even when it wasn’t too late, it was impossible to act upon and then they would just hang up.”

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Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips and David Martin in New York, Haven Daley in San Francisco, Matthew Lee in Washington and R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed to this report.