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My daughter is flying to Johannesburg in August and currently has flights booked with Qatar. Flight times have now been changed and she now has 26 hour stopover in Doha. FCDO advice is against all but essential travel to Qatar so she won't have valid travel insurance and certainly can't leave the airport for a day in the city during the extended stopover. Thanks Trump.
She can get refund and book elsewhere but fuel prices have seen flights get way more expensive. Thanks Trump. KLM via Amsterdam will be around £700 more but removes the whole Doha risk.
So, do we stick with Qatar and hope that Trump gets bored by August or spaff a load more money to de-risk to KLM?
How long is a piece of string ?
How desperate is she to get to Africa?
Im on a similar but different position with a holiday booked in July travelling through DOHA.
We are booked through an agent so abta covered. We have accepted changed flights from Qatar and have some flights ‘on hold’ with Turkish Airlines until the end of May at no extra cost
IMO things must be happening in the background for Qatar now to be even flying .
As you say no positive travel advice at the minute so no insurance so Doha a no for us until tat changes
A friend in Qatar reported fall out from interceptions , the US base was always the target he thought.
It did get less and less , he left a couple of weeks back for a family break and going back ( to live ) shortly.
Another friend stopped in Doha on route back from NZ and loved it because airport was so quiet.....
Binnerette number 2 was flying to Malaysia via Doha the weekend the Tangerine Terror kicked this all off. She ended up with flights cancelled and having to get a train down to London for a rearranged direct flight from Heathrow, a week later, missing the first leg of her travels.
We were all just glad that she hadn't flown 12 hours earlier, in which case she'd have been stuck in Doha for a week while everyone was lobbing missiles all over the place
Ask yourself "what's the worst that can happen?" and given the parties involved and how unpredictable/borderline psychotic they all are, the worst that can happen is probably an enormous regional war.
If there were an alternative available, would I be having a 26 hour stopover in Doha? Nope! Absolutely no chance!! Your daughter may be less risk averse
Daughter #3 lives in Dubai (Emirates cabin crew) and it's basically business as usual.
The number of flights she's doing is reduced at the moment.but it's increasing.
Personally, I can't see there being much appetite to resume engagement from either side and August is really quite a long time away.
Last weekend we had our holiday to Thailand booked with TUI cancelled (9th May departure) and that was flying via the UAE. Assume it was due to the middle east rather the jet fuel shortages in Thailand, but either way, we are now going to somewhere in Europe instead. Even if flights are running, no guarantee you will be on the one you have booked it seems
It may be worth pushing Qatar for more options. The outbound flight is covered by UK261 regulation. Given FCDO advice, she should be able to push for a reroute from her original departure to JNB. However the return flight isn't covered. So she would have to ask if the return portion could be refunded and how much she would get - and that is generally where airlines can be a bit underhand and not have equal fares on each leg. If she could ask for that (reroute out, refund back) she might find a one way back that isn't £700 more - one ways from SA are not allowed to have unreasonable fees added, so before the whole ME horrors, you could get a one way for about £300.