The long road home to UAE: When every second felt like forever after flight cancellations and delays

Difficult times make you grateful for strange things. A month ago, I wouldn’t have heaved so many sighs of relief on holding a boarding pass. It’s a boarding pass that tells you that you’re going home or you’re going on vacation, either way it’s a piece of paper that you will probably forget about later and might even leave behind in the plane itself.

But after our trip back from the US was cancelled in the midst of the ongoing US, Iran-Israel war, the sight of a boarding pass became something else entirely. And so, we spent days scrolling through Twitter handles, chasing updates on flights, watching hope flicker with every changing schedule.

Eventually, we found a flight to New York, one of the few US cities still connecting to the UAE. But as warned, nothing was certain. We might get that flight, or we might not. No amount of refreshing could control the skies.

But the lights on hope weren’t dimming just as yet, and left from LA to New York, reaching early morning at 6:30 am.

 I don’t think that I’ll forget that wait at JFK airport in a hurry. Too tired to move downstairs at first, I sat on the floor, while my husband went to get some food. In front of me, was a couple waiting near the airlines desk.

 Their flight to Dubai still said 10:40 am, but it became obvious by 9:40 am, it was cancelled. The barricades hadn't opened, and no one was at the check-in desk.

As no bond feels stronger than passengers waiting for a flight, I went over to speak with them. They were trying to catch a connecting flight to Bangladesh, a flight that had already been cancelled once, making this their next glimmer of hope. Now all they could do was linger at the ticketing counter, waiting for any news, any chance to get home.

Four hours later, they were still there, standing in the same spot, told simply to wait.

And then it was 1 pm, our turn to start queuing. Check in was at 1:30, but anxiety wasn’t letting me sit quietly. We headed to the beginning of the line and got into a conversation with the security guard, whose job was to keep people from trying to break queues. “I can sense the stress here today,” he remarked.

We laughed.

Every second in the queue felt like an eternity. The check-in desks hadn’t opened yet, and we saw crew members having a regular meeting. Normally, we wouldn’t have worried, but when you’re just waiting to go home, every delay seems like a cancellation. “That’s a long conversation,” the guard remarked.

We nodded.

When the barricades finally opened, one family couldn’t proceed, they had a connecting flight and had to wait, just like the Bangladeshi couple still clinging to their hope. We fumbled with passports and Emirates IDs, every scan taking a little longer in our frazzled state. "What's your PNR?" We were asked.

We recited it from memory, by now. "You know it by heart, don't you," They laughed.

A few boarding passes printed wrong, and were torn up. Even the smallest imperfection threatened a new wave of worry.

Finally, we were allowed through. The long walk to security, and then to the gates, felt like a victory lap. Waiting at the gate didn’t bother me as much as knowing the flight was on schedule. I kept checking the time, the flight status, willing the plane to take off.

On time, it said, and so it remained.  Like I said, the most insignificant details that you take for granted, be it a boarding pass, or just seeing a flight notification, adds up when you just need to get home.

There were only around 68 people who boarded that flight, for a capacity of 325. I walked through a rather empty plane, wondering if I should be grateful that I had a couple of seats to myself so I could stretch myself out, or think about those who had booked and decided to stay back, or those who had booked but weren’t confirmed as yet.

I hoped that they find their way home too.

As the flight took off, I traced the flight map from New York to Abu Dhabi, the route we took, and the routes that had to avoided. Cabin crew checked the map hour by hour, vigilance etched into every movement.

And then, finally, Abu Dhabi appeared beneath us. Relief surged, and I exhaled. It wasn’t just the flight itself, it had been a wait, a boarding pass that printed correctly, a line that finally moved, a plane that had room to breathe. All those little details, usually invisible, had become monumental.

It brought me home.