We landed at Hamad International Airport at approximately 6:00 AM on Monday, June 23 to catch our connecting flight to the USA. Our two-hour layover went by quickly as we stopped for a coffee and cheesecake at an Ili Cafe on our way to our departure gate. The flight departed on time around 8:30 AM. Less than 12 hours later, Iran launched 14 missiles toward Al Udeid Air Force base in Qatar (40 kilometers away from the airport). Qatar officials closed Qatar airspace, stranding passengers. Hamad processes around 10,000 passengers daily, and clearing the backlog will take a few days. I reckon the airspace closed sometime in the late afternoon on Monday, with the bombing around 8:00 PM. Officials reopened the airspace early Tuesday morning. Thankfully, we were off the ground and out of Qatar airspace before the closure took place. In March this year, we just missed the earthquake in Bangkok, flying 4 hours before it hit the city, and the airport was closed. Fortunately for the soldiers at the base, 13 of the missiles were intercepted, and 1 missile flew off course into the water.
As you can see above, we left in the morning. Nadia took a beautiful photo of the Red Sea as we were leaving Saudi Arabia’s airspace. A few hours later, missiles were seen over Doha. We landed in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and made our way through the crowds from the international terminal #5 to the domestic terminal #3. I had a window seat on the flight to Marquette, Michigan, the largest city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The pilot warned of upcoming turbulence due to a storm on Lake Michigan. During the summer months, the relatively cool lake water interact with warm, humid air masses moving over the region causing turbulence in atmosphere. The series of photographs below show our plane approaching the massive cloud system.
The flight however was quite smooth and the anticipated turbulence and instructions to stay in our seats for the 30-minute flight were never needed. I slept through the grey clouds and didn’t wake up until we touched down on the runway of the former K.I. Sawyer International Airport. It used to be an Air Force Base that was developed in the 1950s during the height of the Cold War. It served as the home to nuclear-armed bombers and a strategic refueling station. It is appropriate that our final destination leaving Doha, Qatar on June 23 was a former nuclear bomber base. K.I. Sawyer was closed in 1995 when the collapse of the Soviet Union ended the need for such a remote and expensive air base. Over 4,500 jobs were lost and it was another blow to the economy of the Upper Peninsula. The local high school, the Gwinn “Modeltowners” had a large and diverse student population thanks to the base. Today, the school is just another shrinking school system in rural Michigan. The Stealth Bombers that delivered the strike to the nuclear sites in Iran departed from an Air Force Base in Missouri that probably replaced K.I. Sawyer.
We arrived at 10:00 PM Monday evening and our family was waiting for us at the small airport. It was so nice to see our two sons, my nephew, my brother and his wife. They were kind to greet us and drive the 90 minutes to our home in Iron County, Michigan.
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