Dr. Jay Miller, a pulmonologist in Louisiana, was on a family trip to India when the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, and his plan to return home failed.
Miller’s Qatar Airways flight to Dallas changed course about an hour after taking off from Doha. While returning home after an arduous, 62-hour journey spanning four continents, he recounted his harrowing experience and his “surreal calculus” plan to return home to the New York Times.The 45-year-old doctor left India a week before his wife Swathi Nara and their five-year-old daughter Devi, as he had patients waiting here.
This was Devi’s first trip to India where Nara’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 the explosions. “It was one of those moments where you tell your wife you love her, which I did,” he said.Miller said that he tried to contact the US State Department, and tried to communicate with politicians in Louisiana, but there was no way out of Doha because the airport was closed.
Some of the planes were departing from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, about a nine-hour drive away. Miller planned to go to Riyadh by land and from there to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. He had to apply online for visas to both countries. “We felt we had to move on our own. There was no time or circumstances to wait for someone,” he said, adding that the itinerary was not so out of reach anymore. Dr. Miller hired a driver recommended by his hotel in Doha, but this driver took him to the border of Saudi Arabia.
A second driver transported him through the visa and customs points, and a third driver transported him from the border to the airport in Riyadh. Car services cost about $3,000.
On the evening of March 5, he arrived at Riyadh airport and waited for his early morning flight to Addis Ababa. Dr. Miller had 15 hours to fill in Addis Ababa and visited the National Museum of Ethiopia. He arrived at the airport about three hours before his scheduled departure at 10.40pm. The Ethiopian Airlines flight to Chicago stopped to refuel in Rome, but the passengers did not disembark. Then, with its tanks filled, it took off for Chicago, where it landed just before 8 a.m., on March 7, about a full week after its maiden flight made its midair orbit.From O’Hare, Dr. Miller took a United Airlines flight to New Orleans and slept for 16 straight hours when he got home. He told the New York Times that he then received a phone call from the State Department that went to his voicemail.
