So yesterday was my day off. I didn’t go in to work or do any posting, instead I decided to stay home with Nat who was still exhausted from her evacuation. Thanks to everyone who left comments welcoming her, she will most probably post about her experience today. One thing I realized is that leaving Lebanon isn’t a problem, its the Syrian airport that is.
According to a Kuwaiti lady Nat spoke to at the Damascus airport, it seems some Kuwaitis are really pissed off at the Kuwait embassy. According to that lady, the Kuwaiti embassy dropped them off at the airport with the promise they would be able to find a plane back to Kuwait but she had been in the airport for 2 day and she still is on the waiting list. There are also no representatives from the Kuwaiti embassy at the airport either, they were just dropped off and left alone. Hopefully the lady is back in Kuwait now and that there are no more people stuck like that at the airport.
update: just spoke to a friend who arrived yesterday from Damascus. She told me that she was able to get on an earlier Jazeera flight because they has 16 seats free so I guess there shouldn’t be any more Kuwaitis stuck waiting for a vacant seat.
10 replies on “Kuwaitis stuck in Damascus”
Ouch!
What happened to all the Jumbo jets Kuwait airways was sending to Damascus for the evacuation ?
well I read 12,000 kuwaitis were in Lebanon. Each jumbo jet can carry on average 500 people. That would mean there would have to be 24 Jumbo flights just to evacuate the Kuwaitis.
Now I am doubting all the planes being sent are Jumbo jets plus you need to keep in mind the non kuwaitis coming to Kuwait and you could see why some people are still stuck in the airport.
The jumbo jet was the Amiri Diwan’s jet with VIP configuration. It only has half the seats of a commercial 747
Like Fawaz mentioned its abotu the configuration! Sometimes you just cant do anything about it..
Some of thos jumbos can only carry up to 400 because of the first and business class configuration..
I think people would be better off traveling to Jordan and leaving from their.. thats what my dad did, because he knew there would a mess at the airport! And thats what a friend of mine did as well!
But the mess at the airport is also because the airport is not used to this and dont know how to handle this! There are more planes landing there now this month then there has been in the past 6 months!
I just want to say I’m glad Nat is back and safe…my prayers goes for everyone who is still back in Lebanon.
hahahah it’s the kuwaiti hukkuma just in a diff country, what do you expect?
I was one of those people who was lied to by the Kuwaiti Embassy. They told us all to go up to the Safir hotel in Bhamdoun and that we would be able to catch buses out from there, so we did (two of us) on Friday morning. Once we got there, it was pure chaos. The embassy was totally unorganized and only had about three employees there at the hotel. Why tell all the Kuwaitis to go there if you don’t know how to deal with that many people? The embassy staff (consul and ambassador included) were unhelpful and rude. We couldn’t get on a bus that day because they were giving priority to people with children and elderly. We were told to wait for a phone call telling us when we were assigned to a bus. We naively believed that that would really happen. We missed like 8 buses out merely because we were following the “rules” that turned out to be complete bull. Then, the embassy didn’t offer to pay for the hotel room we had to reserve for the night (even though they had told me when I called that morning that we would “certainly” get a bus out that day).
Next morning, we were told that every single person who was put on a bus to Syria would be guaranteed a seat on a flight out that day. They also told us there would be embassy officials accompanying us to the border, more officials at the border, and then officials from the Kuwaiti embassy in Syria would be there to greet us at the airport. All B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T. Nobody accompanied us – our Lebanese bus driver and one guy on our bus who volunteered to take charge took care of things at the border. Then once we got to the airport, there was no trace of the embassy. It was each man for himself. Went up to the Kuwait Airways office and it was chaos with an enormous waiting list. Guaranteed a seat, my a@@! Luckily, like Nat, we had our tickets booked for Sunday night on Jazeera from Beirut anyway (same flight as Nat, turns out), and so we were confirmed on the replacement flight leaving from Damascus on Sunday. However, we arrived at the airport on Saturday, thinking we had a Kuwait Airways guarnateed ticket out. Of course, all hotels in Damascus were fully booked, and the embassy did nothing to help us find accomodation (I never saw anyone from the embassy in the two days I was in Syria). We had to find our own shelter.
I’m not saying the embassy has to pamper us and do everything for us – quite the contrary, we were perfectly capable of making our own arrangements. All I’m saying is, don’t bloody lie to us and hundreds of others! I would rather they had told us up front: “Look, we’ll try to get you out but there are thousands of you and only a few buses at a time, so we don’t know how long before we can get you across the border. And all we’re doing is getting you to Damascus – from that point on, you have to make your own arrangements. We have extra Kuwait Airways flights arranged, but it’s up to you to get yourself on one of them.” Was that so hard? Why make empty promises and “guarantees” to people who YOU told to come to YOU for help?!