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We left our Airbnb on Tuesday morning with promises to return next year.
The flight to Dubai was fine until we arrived in Eastern Turkey when the pilot announced that because of the situation in the Middle East the airspace over Iraq and Iran was closed and he would have to land in Istanbul to refuel before finding a safe route to Dubai. A few minutes later the decision was to go to Vienna. This meant the flight to Dubai had doubled in length so we missed our connecting flight.

Emirates staff were not prepared for the deluge of passengers - obviously we were not the only flight. We spent 6 hours queuing up in various queues - go to B9 if you want to go to Australia - queue again- go to business - queues got longer and longer with little results or information to passengers.
Eventually Emirates decided to put on an unplanned flight to Sydney but by then our travel agent had arranged a flight via Hong Kong on Friday/Saturday.
Through much persistence we were re scheduled and new boarding cards and luggage labels made.
We were in Dubai airport for 15 hours

There was a cheer on the plane as we took off and we had made lots of friends.

Of course this is 1st world problems and we do not live in Israel,Iran or Lebanon.

We are now home safe