Flights disrupted as Middle East war grounds passengers at Dhaka airport

Suruj Mia set out for Saudi Arabia with a small bag on his head and great expectations in mind.

By evening, he was heading home instead, deflated, confused, and unsure when he would be able to make another attempt.

Suruj was among the passengers on a Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight scheduled to leave Dhaka for Saudi Arabia at 2:30pm today. About an hour after take-off, he said, the cabin crew announcement came: "The aircraft could not continue and would return to Dhaka due to a problem."

The plane turned back and landed in Dhaka around 4:30pm, according to Suruj. Passengers then remained inside the aircraft for another two hours, he said, waiting for a clarity that never came.

When they were finally addressed, Suruj said the airline staffers told them the flight would not leave for now.

“They said, 'What will you do now? The flight will not go.'

"They asked us to leave two phone numbers and contact the place we bought tickets from,” Suruj told The Daily Star.

The disruption came amid escalated tension in the region after US-Israel strikes on Iran and Iran’s counterattack, which drew wider parts of the Middle East into uncertainty, airport officials said.

In an official release, Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport (HSIA) said the airspace over Bahrain, Kuwait, Dubai and Qatar had been temporarily closed as per decisions by the respective civil aviation authorities, triggering cancellations, delays and rescheduling on affected routes.

Suruj said they were told they would be informed when the flight could depart again and asked to return then. Outside the terminal, he lingered around the airport area for a while, hoping the situation would ease. But with no assurance, he decided to go home.

He said he lives in Mymensingh’s Bhaluka and had travelled to Dhaka to board the flight. It was his first time going abroad.

“Everyone thinks I have already left. Now I have to go back and tell them the flight was turned back because a war broke out,” he said in a heavy voice, walking away with his luggage.

Not far from him, a group of 18 people waited on the roadside outside the airport, most of them women. They said they were garment workers bound for Jordan on work visas.

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The group said they had arrived in the evening from different areas of Joypurhat, preparing for a flight scheduled at 6:00am. But they were now confused after getting different kinds of information.

Rita Rani, one of the passengers, said she had taken three months of training to learn garment work and was hoping to start a new chapter abroad.

“I came from Joypurhat, and trained for three months,” she said. “Others with me worked in garment factories in different places in Dhaka, Narayanganj, and Chattogram.”

They said the airline, Jazeera Airways, first asked them to come to the airport around 11:00pm, then later told them to come around 3:00am.

Rita said when some of them went back to the airport a short while earlier, they were again told to wait. “They said if the war stops, the flight will depart. If it does not stop, they will tell us later when we'll be able to go and what we'll do,” she said.

For now, they sit outside with their bags beside them, enduring mosquito bites as the night wears on.

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Another passenger, Minar Hossain, said he came from Brahmanbaria’s Akhaura to catch a connecting flight to the Middle East via New Delhi. He said his Air India flight was scheduled for 9:00pm and that he reached the airport around 3:00pm.

Minar said he remained inside the airport until after iftar, when he was informed that the situation was unfavorable and the flight would not depart.

He said he left the airport around 7:30pm after being told to contact the ticketing point and wait to be called back once conditions improved.

For passengers, the day ended not with departures and arrivals but with returns, waiting, and phone numbers scribbled down as a promise of “later”. Some headed back home to explain what happened. Others stayed outside the airport, unwilling to leave in case a call finally comes.

HSIA, in a release, also requested passengers planning to travel on affected routes to contact their respective airline offices or travel agencies to verify flight status, adding that the situation was being closely monitored.