IIT scholar scraps Europe solo trip after airspace closure amid US-Israel-Iran crisis
India Today
Hundreds of flights were cancelled after Middle East airspace was shut in response to escalating regional tensions, forcing a researcher from Bengaluru to cancel a long-awaited Italy trip.
A two-week dream vacation to Italy ended before it could begin for a Bengaluru-based researcher after Middle East airspace closures disrupted his flight via Dubai. What was meant to be a well-earned break after a year of intense work instead turned into a costly cancellation.
Sumanth Doddapaneni, a PhD scholar at IIT Madras and researcher at Sarvam AI, had carefully planned a solo trip across Italy, covering Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples and Sorrento.
He had spent the past week finalising bookings, looking forward to the holiday after dedicating a year to working on large language models.
However, escalating tensions in the Middle East changed everything. Following US and Israeli strikes on Iran, several countries in the region shut their airspace as a precaution. The closures led to hundreds of flight cancellations and diversions, severely disrupting international travel routes that connect Europe, Asia and Africa through key hubs like Dubai.
Sumanth’s flight was scheduled to transit through Dubai, making the shutdown impossible to bypass. As a result, his entire itinerary had to be cancelled. Sharing his experience on X, he wrote that he had been preparing for the trip after a year of hard work, only to find himself still in Bengaluru instead of boarding his flight.
See the post here:
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