Atlanta travelers struggle to get home amid Middle East flight disruptions
Atlantans Jenny Cotton and her husband, Ardalan Lotfi, have spent years trying to secure his Iranian mother an American green card.
The three met in Dubai late last month for the long-awaited final appointment, because Iran has no American embassy.
Lotfi came to Atlanta a decade ago to study at Georgia Tech. He and Cotton, an Atlanta native, met on a dating app in 2017.
But after the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran resulted in counterattacks that hit major Middle Eastern nations and their airports and left much of the region’s airspace closed, that embassy appointment was canceled.
Some travelers are finally making their way home, but Cotton and her family are among the many still stranded by the crossfire.
The three are sheltering in place at an Airbnb in Dubai, with an uncertain timeline of returning home — and a big disruption to the agonizingly slow immigration process.
“It was really exciting to get to this point, and now here we are,” Cotton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The U.S. State Department told media outlets Thursday it’s aware of at least 20,000 Americans who have returned home since the strikes began, about half of which received department assistance.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines has suspended its lone New York-Tel Aviv flight until March 22 and offered rebooking flexibility through February 2027.
Israel first began landing repatriation flights in Tel Aviv on Thursday. Etihad Airways and Emirates are beginning limited operations. Qatari airspace remained closed as of Friday morning.
‘I’m OK’
The U.S. government told Cotton to leave earlier this week, but the earliest flight was Monday — for $5,000. An alternative border crossing by car to Oman is reportedly taking more than 12 hours, she said.
They’ve decided to stick with their original March 11 departure. The UAE government has promised to cover stranded travelers’ hotel and food costs.
The family continues receiving attack alerts from the local government, which sound on their phones like Amber Alerts do in the United States, Cotton said. They’ve sheltered in doorways during bombings.
“It’s weird how quickly the sounds become normal,” she said.
They don’t yet know if they’ll be able to get Lotfi’s mother, Zohreh Khamin, back to Iran safely. She currently plans to stay in Dubai and try to reschedule her embassy appointment with the help of U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s office.
But this trip has been “special in its own way,” Cotton said. Because normally their reunion trips have been in hotels, it is also the first time Lotfi has had his mother’s cooking in nearly a decade.
There was initially a panic, Cotton said: “I’m going to bed wondering, is our building going to get bombed? Things I never thought I would worry about.”
But Dubai schools are back in session and things seem to be moving back toward normalcy.
Cotton’s mother-in-law, Khamin, “is used to this. She’s not as worried. She was very worried about me. I had to sit her down and say, ‘I’m OK, I’m not going anywhere.’”
‘Might as well get stuck here’
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Isri Halpern is an Israeli filmmaker who was in metro Atlanta to screen a film at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival when the attack started. He was supposed to land back in Israel on Feb. 26.
But after several flight cancellations he was forced to extend his Atlanta trip with an apartment rental downtown.
Ultimately, Halpern was lucky to get a seat on one of the first repatriation flights home from New York on Thursday, he said.
He’s never seen the Tel Aviv airport’s departure area so empty, he told the AJC via WhatsApp upon arrival.
A fellow Israeli filmmaker who had been in Atlanta for the festival, Duki Dror, chose a different escape path.
When his original flight home was canceled, he decided to fly to Greece instead, “to make a move towards home. Get closer. I’m not sure I did the right decision because now I don’t have a flight,” he said.
It’s not clear when Dror will make it back to Israel, but in the meantime he said he plans to catch some of a documentary film festival in the Greek port city of Thessaloniki.
On the plus side for Halpern, his delay in Atlanta meant he was able to watch his film, “Proud Jewish Boy,” win the film festival’s best documentary award this week.
“If I’ve got to get stuck, might as well get stuck here. Between the Southern hospitality and the Jewish solidarity I’ll be OK‚” he said.
But he did long to return home: “With all due respect to downtown Atlanta, I’m not sure if there isn’t less to do in downtown Atlanta than Israel during a bombing.”
Israel’s Consul General to the Southeast, Eitan Weiss, told the AJC that incoming flights would be allowed from all over the world starting Thursday to rescue stranded Israelis. The Times of Israel reported the first wave brought in about 3,500 people.
“The funny thing about Israel is that usually when war happens in Israel, most Israelis and Jews want to fly there,” Weiss said.
Crossing the Israel-Egypt border by bus
A group of 22 Atlanta-area women were on a weeklong trip to Israel when the red alerts started.
The Jewish Women’s Connection of Atlanta trip was about volunteering and connecting with Israeli communities and female leaders.
They were able to do much of that before the disruption, participant Shilvi Leinwand explained to the AJC via WhatsApp while on a long-awaited plane ride home Thursday evening.
The group connected with Israelis, helped paint a bomb shelter and packed food boxes for Ethiopian families, she said.
But once the strikes started, their March 2 flight home was canceled. Tel Aviv’s airport closed.
The group was left stranded in a Jerusalem hotel for four days, considering their options to get out. “Ultimately the Egypt route through the Taba crossing emerged as the most viable option at that moment,” Leinwand said.
Taba is a more than four-hour drive from Jerusalem.
In the meantime, they stayed largely sheltered in the hotel but traveled up and down stairs to bomb shelters whenever sirens sounded, she said.
“Life continued in those shelters in surprising ways — we talked with our neighbors, played games, and tried to keep a sense of normalcy,” she said.
“What surprised me most was how quickly people adapt,” Leinwand said. “Life continues, even in shelters. People talk, help each other, and support each other. That resilience is something Israelis live with every day.”
The group left Jerusalem at 1 a.m. Wednesday, traveling by bus through the Negev desert, quietly waiting for the sunrise. “We knew that if a siren sounded we would need to stop the bus, get out, and lie flat on the ground until it cleared,” she said.
“Fortunately, during the entire drive there were no sirens, which felt like a small piece of good luck,” Leinwand said.
The crossing itself went smoothly, she said. The group was told not to wear visible Jewish symbols.
From there, they caught a flight to Rome, and 48 hours after leaving Jerusalem, they landed in Atlanta on Thursday evening.
How does she feel? “Ready to be back home with my family,” she said.
It’s “an experience that will stay with me forever.”
About the Author
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
