On Monday, Qatar Airways faced one of its biggest ever crisis events when Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles at a US airbase just 80 miles to the south of its homebase at Doha Hamad International Airport.
The airspace across Qatar, as well as Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, was immediately shut down as the night sky lit up with missiles flying over Doha towards their target.
There are rumors that Qatar had knowledge of the impending attack. In fact, some sources claim that the strike was arranged in concert with Qatari authorities, but no one at Qatar Airways was aware of the situation until it was too late.
Despite tensions in the Persian Gulf being on tenterhooks in the aftermath of the US bombing on key Iranian nuclear sites, operations at Qatar Airways on Monday were on track just like any other day.
The airline is a global behemoth, carrying more than 100,000 passengers daily on hundreds of flights across its extensive worldwide network of over 170 destinations. The vast majority of these passengers connect through the airline’s impressive hub at Doha Hamad International Airport.
At 6 pm (Doha local time), however, Qatar Airways chief executive Badr Mohammed Al Meer received a call that he is never likely to forget. Qatar had made the unprecedented decision to shut down its airspace immediately for an indefinite period.
“This week brought an operational crisis few airlines will ever encounter, and one that challenged the very core of what it means to run a global airline,” Al Meer said in an open letter to passengers who were caught up in the extraordinary events of June 23.
“Hamad International Airport, one of the world’s busiest and most connected global hubs, was brought to a standstill, with almost 100 aircraft en route to Doha, several already on approach to our runways, and others lining up for departure,” Al Meer continued.
As missiles and interceptors danced across the skies of Doha, around 90 flights with more than 20,000 passengers onboard were immediately forced to divert.
Twenty-five flights closest to Doha diverted to airports across Saudi Arabia, while 18 went to Turkey, 15 to India, 13 to Oman, and 5 to the United Arab Emirates.
With space at airports across the Persian Gulf quickly filling up, other flights were diverted to London, Barcelona, as well as other airports across Europe, Asia, and North America.
“Our routine, seamlessly synchronised global operation was, in an instant, scattered into dozens and dozens of disrupted flight scenarios across continents, each with their own complexities and requirements,” Al Meer explained.
10,000 passengers were already inside Doha Airport at the time of the airspace closure. Their onward travel plans were immediately thrown into disarray.
As Al Meer explains: “They found themselves caught in the middle of one of the most severe and complex operational challenges in modern aviation history.”
It would take just over six hours for Qatari airspace to reopen, but that didn’t mean operations could resume seamlessly.
By this point, aircraft that should have been in Doha in time to fly to a new destination were scattered at airports across the region and the rest of the world.
Pilots and flight attendants had run out of legal hours to work, or overnight curfews had kicked in, meaning that planes had to remain where they were for at least another 12 hours before they could return to Doha.
Some planes were, however, still able to continue their journeys back to Doha once airspace had reopened. Every plane back in Doha was a step towards restoring the airline’s shattered schedule, but with it came another problem.
By 5 am on June 25, the number of passengers in transit at Hamad International suddenly surged from 10,000 to 22,000. Despite Qatar Airways attempting to bulk book hotel rooms across Doha, they could only acquire 3,200 rooms, providing accommodation for 4,600 customers.
Thousands of others were left to wait in long lines, attempting to reach a customer service desk to be rebooked onto a new flight.
Some passengers have complained on social media about a lack of staff on hand to help them, with desks left unmanned, although Al Meer insists the airline immediately stepped up contingency plans to get as many staff onto front-line positions as possible.
The most vulnerable passengers, along with the elderly and families with young children, were prioritized, while 35,000 meals were supplied to passengers who had to camp overnight in the airport as they waited for news about when they might be able to escape.
They found themselves caught in the middle of one of the most severe and complex operational challenges in modern aviation history.
“All passengers from diverted flights — approximately 20,000 in total — were cleared within 24 hours,” Al Meer says, 11,000 of which left in the so-called ‘morning wave’ of flights.”
“Within just 18 hours, our scheduled operations had resumed. Wave by wave, the system began to stabilise,” Al Meer continued. “By the end of Tuesday, more than 58,000 passengers had departed Doha.”
And now? Operations have been restored to near normal levels, the airline says. Despite the very real disruption that many passengers endured, that’s still an incredibly impressive response, and something that many major international carriers would struggle to emulate.
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