Two hundred Australians touched down in Sydney on Wednesday after departing Dubai on the first flight to leave the UAE since the outbreak of hostilities across the Gulf. It is a start. Against the backdrop of an estimated 115,000 Australians caught in the region, it is also a sobering illustration of just how vast this crisis has become.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong did not shy away from the scale of what her department is confronting.
"This is a consular crisis that dwarfs any Australia has had to deal with in terms of numbers of people,"she told ABC's RN, as reported by SBS News. Around 24,000 Australians are understood to be in Dubai alone, according to Wong, with the remainder scattered across a region where airspace over Iran, Iraq, Israel, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain has been shut or severely restricted since US and Israeli strikes triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks at the weekend.
The trigger for the chaos was swift and devastating. The current crisis stems from US and Israeli strikes on Iran and a wave of retaliatory missile and drone attacks across the region, including on and around the United Arab Emirates. Four people were injured after a missile hit a concourse at Dubai International Airport on Sunday morning. The world's busiest international airport, reduced to a war zone transit point in a matter of hours.
The arithmetic of the response is confronting. Typically, some 11,000 Australians transit through the region each day when flights are operating normally. Getting 115,000 people home through a patchwork of sporadically reopening airspace is not simply a logistical challenge; it is a diplomatic one. Wong confirmed she had spoken with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, and that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had called UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan overnight to press for the resumption of commercial services as quickly as possible, as SBS News reported.
The government's chosen strategy, prioritising commercial flights over government-chartered evacuation, is defensible on the numbers but has left many Australians frustrated. Wong has emphasised that the sheer number of Australians affected means commercial services are central to getting people home, saying "the most efficient way for people to return home is if we can facilitate their boarding of commercial flights", while also noting "the challenge lies in the fact that flights are currently not operating" in the way they normally would. Critics may point to the Italian government, which arranged a charter flight carrying 127 Italian citizens stranded in Oman, or moved there from Dubai, which landed at Rome's Fiumicino airport on Monday, as an example of more decisive unilateral action. Germany, too, said its tourism industry is responsible for bringing home most of roughly 30,000 Germans stranded in the region, while planning to charter two Lufthansa flights, one from Riyadh and another from Muscat, to bring home particularly vulnerable citizens.
The counter-argument deserves serious consideration: Australia's 115,000 citizens dwarf the numbers facing most comparable governments. France, with an estimated 400,000 nationals across affected countries, is also relying primarily on commercial channels while preparing limited charter capacity for vulnerable travellers. The scale genuinely changes the calculus. Wong's insistence that only a restored commercial network can move people in the required volumes is not spin; it reflects hard operational reality.
But for Australians on the ground, operational realities offer cold comfort. An Australian woman identified by 7News as Trina Hockley found herself stranded in Doha after a stopover on her way home from a holiday in Helsinki turned into a days-long ordeal. Without her luggage, and critically without heart medication she said "doesn't exist in Qatar", she told Sunrise she was preparing for what she had been warned would be "a really bad night", as missile attacks intensified and unverified rumours spread through hotel dining rooms about air defence systems running low on interceptor missiles. Those rumours have not been officially confirmed, but the fear they generate is real enough. Hotel lobbies became information hubs. Concierge desks handled airline queries. Business centres transformed into rebooking stations.
The federal government has expanded its registration system so Australians in the UAE and the wider Middle East can log their details and receive direct updates. Wong has urged people to register, saying the government needs to know where citizens are so it can contact them quickly about any changes or options to leave. Australians requiring assistance can register through DFAT's crisis portal or call the 24-hour consular emergency line on +61 2 6261 3305. The Smartraveller advisory has been raised to "do not travel" for Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Qatar, the UAE and Yemen, with Jordan, Oman and Saudi Arabia now rated "reconsider your need to travel".
For travellers not yet at the airport, the Australian Travel Industry Association has clear advice: do not cancel your booking. "It's really important that Australians do not head to the airport unless they have a confirmed flight showing in their airline, travel agency or tour operator app," said ATIA CEO Dean Long. "These changes are occurring every couple of hours, so travellers need to keep checking before they go. Most importantly, do not cancel your ticket; wait for the airline to cancel so you remain eligible for rebooking or a full refund."
This crisis also exposes a structural vulnerability that predates the current conflict by years. The Middle East is the single largest connection point for Europe for Australians flying on Qatar, Emirates and Etihad Airways. Experts say the disruption exposes Australia's reliance on Middle Eastern megahubs and highlights the strategic value of forthcoming ultra-long-haul "Project Sunrise" non-stop services to London and New York. Qantas has so far been less affected, because its Europe routes bypass Gulf hubs entirely.
The fundamental question now is one of timeline. With US combat operations reported to be continuing, there is no clear signal that airspace will reopen soon. Travel insurance underwriters have confirmed that most policies exclude acts of war, with insurers typically looking at the direct cause of a loss; if the airspace closure is due to the conflict, the exclusion will generally apply. Stranded travellers without cover face not just the anxiety of an uncertain return, but potentially significant out-of-pocket costs.
Two hundred people are home. The other 114,800 are waiting. What the government does in the days ahead, and whether it can secure more consistent flight corridors through diplomatic pressure on Gulf partners, will determine whether this crisis is remembered as a competent response to an impossible situation, or a lesson in the limits of a reactive consular system when the numbers overwhelm the playbook.