Louisiana pulmonary specialist Dr Jay Miller was on a once-in-a-lifetime family trip to India when US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 and his plan to get back home went on a toss. Miller’s Qatar Airways flight to Dallas made a U-turn about an hour after taking off from Doha. As he was back home after a four-continent gruelling travel that took 62 hours, he recounted his harrowing experience and his ‘surreal calculus’ plan to get back to home to the NYT.
The 45-year-old doctor left India a week earlier than his wife Swathi Narra and their five-year-old daughter Devi — as he had patients waiting here.
It was Devi’s first trip to India where Narra’s deceased father grew up.
After the flight returned to Doha, Dr Miller had to spend five anxious nights in Doha as the windows of his hotel room shook from explosions. “It was one of the moments when you tell your spouse you love them, which I did,” he said.
Miller said he tried calling the US State Department, tried to reach out to Louisiana politicians but there was no way out of Doha as the airport was closed.
Some jets were departing from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a roughly nine-hour drive away. Miller planned to go to Riyadh by road and from there to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. He had to apply for online visas to the two countries.
“We felt we had to move on our own. There was not time or the circumstances to wait for someone,” he said, adding that the itinerary did not feel far-fetched any more. Dr Miller hired a driver that his Doha hotel recommended but that driver took him to the border of Saudi Arabia. A second driver got him through the visa and customs checkpoints and a third drove him from the border to the airport in Riyadh. The car services cost about $3,000.
On the evening of March 5, he arrived at Riyadh airport and waited for his Addis Ababa flight early morning.
Dr Miller had 15 hours to fill in Addis Ababa and he visited the National Museum of Ethiopia. He arrived back at the airport about three hours ahead of his 10.40 pm departure. His Chicago-bound Ethiopian Airways flight made a refueling stop in Rome, but passengers did not disembark. Then, with its tanks filled, it took off for Chicago, where it landed shortly before 8 am, March 7, about a full week after his first flight made its midair U-turn.
From O’Hare, Dr Miller took a United Airlines flight to New Orleans and he slept 16 hours straight as he reached home. It was then he received a call back from the State Department which went to his voicemail, he told the NYT.
