Prairieville family stuck in Dubai. EDIT: En route home

I assume someone here knows them...

A man, his pregnant wife, and two young kids are stuck on vacation in Dubai because of the war with Iran.

I have no idea why anyone would want to make that trip with clearly very young kids. Would anyone here take their young family to the Middle East on vacation?

quote:

---

A cellphone suddenly buzzes with the sound of an emergency alert. The interview pauses. It’s a notification of a possible missile attack.

This has become the daily life for Christian Walker, his wife Kate Sinclair-Faulkner and their two children, while the Prairieville family is in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai during the war with Iran.

The family arrived Feb. 18 after planning the trip for a while because they had accumulated airline miles, Walker said.

“We kind of finally had to come to now because my wife's pregnant and we couldn't do it much later in the pregnancy, and then we figured it would also be much harder with three little ones when we're outnumbered,” he stated. “So those things kind of prompted it.”

A few days after the strikes began, the U.S. Department of State urged Americans in more than a dozen countries in the region to leave using commercial transportation

Walker said he and his wife have “been playing it by ear” and reaching out to the state department.

“They urge you to leave the Middle East, but you will call the State Department line, and then it's like, ‘Press one if you're in the Middle East.’ And you press it, and it's like, ‘Well, we're not actively chartering or evacuating right now. Contact your airline,’” he said.

The family has called their commercial airline each morning for seats home, but flights home keep being cancelled and rebooked.

---

TheAdvocate.com

Photo from The Advocate:


EDIT: It looks like they were able to catch a flight home. Glad they are safe, but still don't think it was the smartest move to go there.

quote:

---

Since then, Walker and his family have been able to board a flight to the U.S. and expect to arrive back home Saturday morning.

"We got lucky because they had what appears to be a drone attack not long after we departed, and they suspended operation at the airport," Walker told WBRZ.

---

WBRZ