The Middle East airspace closed on a Saturday morning, leaving thousands of travellers – many South Africans included – stranded in terminals and cities they had never intended to stop in. Flights were cancelled without warning, and itineraries that had taken months to plan, unravelled in hours.
What happened next depended almost entirely on one decision that had been made weeks or months earlier, in a moment when everything still felt certain: how these travellers had booked their trip.
Had they booked through a travel agent – someone they could call immediately for support and damage control – or had they decided to go it alone?
What the airlines did right
Emirates and Qatar Airways, whose hubs in Dubai and Doha were most directly affected by the Middle East airspace closures, responded with speed, transparency, and genuine passenger care that set a very high standard. According to Sue Garrett, GM Supply, Pricing and Marketing at Flight Centre South Africa, the airlines communicated full refunds by 10am on the same morning the airspace closed, and they extended rebooking windows repeatedly as the situation remained uncertain. Furthermore, contact centres operated 24/7 throughout, including during Ramadan, when extended hours would not normally apply.
“Emirates ran open-forum webinars for travel agents the same afternoon policies were issued, and Qatar’s country manager in South Africa was communicating directly with Flight Centre via WhatsApp, ensuring agents had accurate, current information to pass on to clients,” comments Garrett.
This exceptional response during times of crisis matters. Because what follows is not an argument that the airlines failed, but about something more precise and more important.
The gap between communication and guidance
Good airline communication tells you what has happened. But it’s your travel agent who tells you what to do next.
When an airline notifies you that your flight has been cancelled, it can offer you two options: a refund or rebooking on the next available service. What it cannot tell you is which of those options is right for your specific situation – whether your onward connection can be salvaged or your hotel booking is recoverable, whether your travel insurance covers the additional night’s accommodation, or whether an alternative carrier has availability on your routing that would get you home faster than waiting for the airline’s next service.
“When a journey has already commenced and disruption strikes, the airline is the right first call. They’re best placed to manage the immediate flight situation,” explains Zay Ferguson-Nair, Customer Experience Leader at Flight Centre South Africa. “But the moment that’s resolved, the travel agent steps in to manage everything else, including the hotel extension, the car hire, the onward connection, and the insurance claim. Those are the moving parts that fall through the cracks when there’s no one coordinating them.”
That coordination happened automatically for travellers who had booked through a travel agent. For those who had booked directly, whether with the airline or through an online platform, the coordination was their responsibility – in an unfamiliar city, exhausted and stressed, with a phone full of conflicting information and a queue stretching the length of the terminal.
The moment that made it real
Among the thousands of South Africans navigating the disruption, one case stayed with Garrett.
A South African passenger had been stranded mid-route in Singapore. It was Sunday and she needed to be home by Tuesday for dialysis.
“I was trying to reach Emirates’ contact centre,” Garrett recalls. “When I finally got through, a supervisor called me back personally. We explained the situation, and without hesitation, they worked with us to confirm a seat on an alternative carrier, getting the client home in time for her treatment.”
What made that outcome possible was the combination of an airline supervisor willing to exercise human judgment, and a travel agent who knew who to call and how to make the case. Remove either element and the outcome changes.
What South Africans already know, and the data that proves it
Flight Centre’s Global PR Survey found that 97% of South African travel intenders see value in using a travel agent – the highest endorsement of any market surveyed globally. 66% cite expertise and knowledge as the primary value, 62% cite peace of mind if things change or go wrong, as well as reduced stress by having someone taking care of everything, and 54% value assistance with complex or multi-destination itineraries.
South African travel intenders are also the most likely of any market globally to trust travel experts as a source of travel advice – ahead of social media and significantly ahead of AI tools. Rather than blind loyalty, that trust is the accumulated evidence of what expert guidance actually delivers both in normal times and in moments of crisis.
“South Africans have always understood instinctively that having someone in your corner makes a difference. What the past few months have done is provide the clearest possible demonstration of what that difference actually looks like in practice,” says Garrett.
What’s ahead?
The Middle East crisis will resolve. Its timeline remains uncertain, but its eventual conclusion is not. When it does, the travel environment South Africans return to will be more complex than the one they left, with more routing options, carriers, variables to navigate, and AI tools promising to simplify what they often complicate.
The question of what human expertise actually delivers has never been more relevant.
So, book with someone who knows what to do when things go wrong. Because, as recent events have proven, things go wrong.
