Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Monday the 23rd of June and I'm at a very busy Gatwick Airport.

Many people heading off happily to destinations such as the eastern Mediterranean, that's Greece,

Cyprus and Turkey, and also on Qatar Airways to Doha in Qatar and on Emirates to Dubai in the UAE.

But there has been a lot of disruption over the weekend as a result of the increased conflict

between Iran and Israel. And of course on Saturday night, the United States joined in with Donald Trump targeting

Tehran's nuclear facilities with bombs. British Airways actually cancelled four flights in a row

from London Heathrow to Dubai. Three of them would you should go yesterday on Saturday, and then one on Saturday night,

which was cancelled late in the evening. But the flight before that, actually, a couple of hundred

people went on a flight to, well, I was going to say nowhere, not quite. They flew for five

hours south over Europe, the Mediterranean Sea, Egypt,

then across into Saudi Arabia, the new southerly flight path since the conflict erupted,

and then over Saudi Arabian airspace, they decided to go home. Now, the aircraft of Boeing 787 Dreamliner

was only fuelled and crewed for a flight to Dubai, taking perhaps seven hours. But as a result of

the turnback, they could reach only as far as Zurich. It's about 500 miles from Heathrow, maybe one hour's flying time, but they had to divert.

There was no choice.

And the aircraft on Sunday afternoon flew from Zurich to Heathrow.

There are still many flights, as I mentioned, going in and out of Dubai and Doha.

For instance, the Emirates flights overnight on Saturday all went as scheduled,

and there will be thousands of British people flying today.

British Airways says, as a result of recent events, we've adjusted our flight schedule to ensure the safety

of our customers and crew, which is also always our top priority. We are contacting our customers

...