They eloped to the Maldives, then war broke out and they couldn’t get home

Simona Musu and Dean Scheepers could barely contain their excitement when they arrived at the Maldives’ Malé-Velana International Airport on February 22.

The couple, who are from South Africa and live in Amsterdam, had traveled to the island country for a special occasion: to exchange marital vows in an intimate beach ceremony, a precursor to their courthouse wedding planned for later this summer.

“We were on cloud nine,” Musu tells CNN Travel. “We felt so glamorous. We went straight from the airport, and there was someone standing with our names on a sign who took us to the seaplane and then to our resort.”

A week later, the couple returned to the airport. But this time, their mood was far more grim. Their flights back to the Netherlands the day prior, along with thousands of others all over the globe, had been canceled following the February 28 strikes by the US and Israel on Iran, putting the couple among tens of thousands of stranded travelers.

The following Monday, at least a hundred of them packed Malé, as the airport is commonly known, charging phones, tending to young children and sleeping in any available space. “No one looked like they just had a vacation on an island,” Scheepers says.

He and Musu were in a state of shock themselves, having just returned from their luxurious week at an all-inclusive, five-star property — the highlight of which was their wedding ceremony on the resort’s private white-sand beach, complete with Maldivian drummers and a walkway full of rose petals and vibrant pink blooms.

Instead of heading back to Amsterdam, where a group of family and friends was waiting to celebrate with them, Musu and Scheepers were facing a far less pleasant scenario: no place to stay, no options for upcoming flights and no idea when — or how — they would return home.

“The whole week we had at the resort was incredible,” Musu says. “The wedding day was just perfect, beautiful, everything went to plan. From there on, downhill. It’s been an absolute nightmare.”

Two weeks after the conflict started, global air travel — and the tourism industry it propels — remains highly disrupted, marking the worst travel crisis since the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to data from aviation analysts Cirium received by CNN on March 13, around 52,000 flights have been canceled in the Middle East region since the strikes began, affecting around six million passengers. Despite the ongoing uncertainty, some airports have resumed operations, including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and King Khalid International near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the crisis, the Middle East had established itself as a key region in global aviation, fueled by the growing influence of prominent Gulf hubs including Dubai, Emirates’ home base, Abu Dhabi (home to Etihad) and Doha, Qatar Airways’ hub. According to data from Cirium, approximately one in five passengers travelling between Europe and Asia-Pacific in 2025 flew on Middle Eastern carriers. Regional airlines were expected to carry around 240 million passengers in 2026, according to the International Air Transport Association.

But the immediate future looks far more uncertain, with many airlines still struggling to manage cancellations and stranded travelers. Qatar Airways has been among the hardest-hit: According to data from flight tracker FlightAware, between 69 and 81% of the carrier’s flights were canceled daily from March 7 through 11 for a total of 2,185 cancellations.

That’s a pattern Musu and Scheepers experienced firsthand. Their flights were rescheduled then canceled for a total of five times, twisting their originally blissful trip into an “extended honeymoon disaster” that has stretched to almost three weeks — nearly three times longer than they planned to spend in the Maldives, Musu says.

They have logged hours online every day, scouring the Internet and messaging airline customer service, trying to find alternate solutions. Some options are sky-high — more than $3,000 for a one-way ticket — while others come with brutal travel times, like one route Musu found with multiple connections over a whopping 56 hours.

eeks after the joint US/Israel strikes started, competition remains incredibly fierce for flights. “Everything goes so fast,” Scheepers says. “Even when we spot tickets, they’re gone in a couple of seconds.”

Several countries, including the Maldives, have organized repatriation flights — but the couple has had no luck with those, either. Musu has Italian citizenship through her parents, and her mother contacted Italy’s embassy in South Africa to see if the couple could be booked, along with other Italians, on a flight from the Maldives to Rome that Musu was aware of. But the request was “declined,” Musu says, noting that Scheepers, who isn’t an Italian citizen, wouldn’t have been eligible anyway.

While there have been repatriation flights organized for South Africans, the couple did not pursue that avenue, being unsure of whether the government could — or would — assist in evacuating two citizens who live outside outside the country.