A travel expert says international airports currently closed due to the military action in Iran could reopen sooner than many people think. Journalist Simon Calder released his prediction as he caught a flight from Istanbul, Turkey.

One person has been killed and 11 others were injured at airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. More than 3,400 flights were cancelled and airports in Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar’s capital, Doha, and Manama in Bahrain were among those closed.

The Foreign Office is warning British citizens against all but essential travel to Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE. It means hundreds of thousands of travellers are stuck in the region, many of whom are thought to be either British or those seeking to fly to the UK.

Speaking in an Instagram video, Mr Calder said: “The main question is when is the disruption going to stop?

“Dubai indefinitely closed; Emirates is kind of saying that sometime on Monday it might start up again. Doha, they’re going to give an update at 6 o’clock British time tomorrow. And Etihad and Abu Dhabi airport, they’re saying, well actually, yeah, we might be opening before that.

“And I hope that the flight ban and also the travel advice from the Foreign Office saying do not go to these places will be lifted as soon as possible so that people can come back.

“I’m going to say, if you twisted my arm, we will probably see flights start up in the next couple of days but in a small way because, of course, planes and pilots and cabin crew and passengers are all out of position. So it’s going to take some time to get this back to normal and I simply hope that it is done with the maximum energy and indeed money just to try to make sure that people are back when they need to be as soon as possible.”

Mr Calder said that – other than the Covid-19 pandemic – levels of disruption such as those witnessed over the weekend had not been seen since the days of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption and subsequent ash cloud in Iceland.

Over the course of a week, about 20 countries closed their airspace to commercial jet traffic and it affected approximately 10 million travellers. Mr Calder said things were not that bad ‘yet’ but said these were extraordinary times and things were ‘definitely heading in that direction’.

He also said that, due to the sheer size of the airports involved and the level of disruption, it would take a considerable amount of time for the situation to resolve itself even after flights resumed.

He said: “Just bear in mind that every day that there are no flights going in and out of the world’s busiest international airport, Dubai, and Doha, and Abu Dhabi, that is two and a half thousand flights and about half a million people. The numbers are really staggering.

“Every hour generally, on average, 20,000 people land and depart from those airports, and so you have a massive problem building up. And certainly the numbers haven’t been added to because, of course, people are there, but what’s happening is that people’s holidays are ending and so they are being added to the back of the queue at the airport. It’s a desperate position for them to be in.

“It is going to be quite interesting to see how it is done, because you’ve got to remember that the numbers in Dubai rather exceed the current capacity of them.

“So let’s take a case of an expat who’s booked on the 5th of March, and let’s hope very much that flights are back on the 5th of March. That expat is expected to take her or his seat, and the fact that somebody’s been there for five days and really wants to get home isn’t relevant; it’s whoever’s got the booking in.

“And so I think there may well be shuttle services operated. They might even go to somewhere like Cyprus; they might just take people back and forth to a relatively short-haul destination from where people can board relatively short-haul flights. That would seem to cause the least amount of problem.

“I don’t know if this is going to happen, but I do know that there’s an awful lot of people out there who really want to be somewhere else and heavens, just imagine the stress and upset if you know that there’s somebody across the Gulf who is sending drones and missiles in your direction. A horrible situation for everybody.”