‘I felt like the world was ending,’ says Dubai resident who survived Riyadh airport attack

A solo trip to Bangkok for a concert turned into a four-day ordeal for a UAE resident after she was stranded in Saudi Arabia following a Houthi attack on Riyadh airport.

“I felt like the world was ending. I genuinely thought there was no way back,” Sunaira Sohail, a Dubai-based public relations executive, told Khaleej Times in an interview after her return from Saudi Arabia.

Sohail recounted spending 26 hours in a Riyadh airport terminal, witnessing a blast nearby and taking an overnight bus home following the Houthi attack on the airport.

While queuing at a counter at Riyadh airport to update her boarding pass for her next flight to Bangkok, the Houthi missile struck the airport.

“It (the blast) literally happened right next to us. The impact was so huge that we were pushed to the left. When we looked to the right, the entire place was filled with smoke,” she said.

Alarms sounded, but, she said, there were initially no personnel to guide passengers.

“People were screaming and crying. Officials ordered everyone to move to the arrivals area. Transit passengers without entry stamps were worried they would be unable to re-enter the airport, but they were told not to worry.”

After the blast, she added, phone networks and airport Wi-Fi were down, preventing her from contacting her family in Dubai.

More than 4,000 flights across Saudi Arabia’s airports have been cancelled since Houthi attacks intensified on October 8, resulting in deaths and injuries among passengers at airports. Riyadh airport has been closed by the Saudi authorities until October 17.

Delay after delay

Sunaira had called the airline hours before departure to ask whether regional tensions would affect her flight. She was told everything was on schedule.

“But I had this intuitive feeling that something was not right. I was reading Quran the entire time because I was really scared.”

She landed at Riyadh airport at 1.30am, with her onward flight to Bangkok scheduled for 2.30am. She said her connecting flights were repeatedly delayed.

That flight was postponed to 5.30am and then to 7.30am.

Passengers were boarded at 10.30am and remained inside the aircraft for more than two hours. But they were later asked deboard the aircraft and return to the terminal.

By then, she said, they had been at the airport for around 26 hours. “Like in the movie The Terminal, we were stuck there for 26 hours.”

No accommodation, no food

She added that passengers went without accommodation, food and water for hours, while the Saudi airline refused to provide assistance.

She said passengers were later told that accommodation was available only to those with a Saudi visa and would cost £140. Many applied out of desperation. She chose, as promisd again, to wait for the 2.30am flight instead to leave for Bangkok.

Sunaira and a few friends took a free shuttle intended to transport stranded passengers to hotels. After spending about two hours travelling between fully booked hotels, the driver dropped them near a metro station.

“They said, ‘Go find your own accommodation,’” she recalled.

The group found an Airbnb about 15 minutes from the airport after police told them the airport would reopen the next day. It did not.

A search for answers

With her luggage missing, Sunaira spent days trying to get answers from officials. The airline said the bags were the airport’s responsibility, while the airport said they belonged to the airline’s responsibility.

She also struggled to obtain a document confirming that she had been evacuated.

She said some of her friends travelled to Doha, Qatar, before taking connecting flights back to the UK and the US.

Eventually, Sohail applied for an urgent visa and boarded a bus that left Riyadh at 4pm. It reached Abu Dhabi at 9am the following day.

Even while travelling back to the UAE, she said, passengers’ phones lit up with alerts about hostile threats.

“We got the alert and looked up, and right in front of our eyes, an interception happened. It’s something you only see in movies.”

More than five days later, Sunaira said she had still not received her luggage or refunds.

“It was the complete opposite of what I had imagined for my first solo trip. But, thank God, I’m back in the UAE. And that’s the best part.”