Middle East flight cuts strand OFWs, delay balikbayan boxes

The war everyone hoped would stay contained just reached your travel plans.

Philippine carriers have suspended flights to Dubai and Riyadh. Not rescheduled — suspended. The difference matters if you booked a ticket home for a wedding, a medical emergency, or the end of a contract you’ve been counting down for months.

The Flights That Aren’t Flying

Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific both pulled their Gulf routes this week. Dubai, a major hub for Filipino workers in the Middle East, is now unreachable by direct flight from Manila on affected dates. Riyadh followed. The airlines cited security concerns.

About 397,892 Filipino worker deployments were recorded to the UAE in 2025, according to Department of Migrant Workers data cited in reports. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remained one of the top destinations for OFWs, accounting for 21.9% of the 2.19 million OFWs estimated by the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2024. That’s a huge population whose easiest path home just narrowed.

And it’s not just people. Cargo disruptions are hitting shipments too, which is why Rappler had to write a story with the most painful headline of the week: Your balikbayan box? It will have to wait.

What the Government Says It Will Do

The Department of Foreign Affairs rolled out its standard crisis playbook: hotlines, repatriation funds, coordination with embassies. Rappler’s fact-check on government aid lays it out clearly enough. If you’re an OFW in distress, you can access the ₱1 billion Assistance to Nationals fund. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration is also mandated under the Migrant Workers Act to maintain a ₱100 million Emergency Repatriation Fund.

But here’s what those numbers don’t tell you: mandatory government-led evacuation only kicks in at Alert Level 4. As of the DFA advisory reported on March 3, 2026, the UAE was excluded from the Middle East crisis alert list, while Saudi Arabia was not under Alert Level 4. That’s the phase where the government urges evacuation and fully implements repatriation operations.

Which means if your contract ends next month and there are no flights, you’re on your own to find a route through Doha, or Istanbul, or whichever hub is still operating. Those tickets cost more. A lot more.

What This Means If You’re Waiting for Someone

Sa totoo lang, the hardest part isn’t even the ticket price. It’s the uncertainty.

If you’re expecting a relative home for the holidays, you’re now refreshing airline websites that haven’t updated their rebooking policies. If you’re waiting for a balikbayan box — the one with the chocolates your kids asked for, the vitamins for your mother, the small proof that distance hasn’t erased you from the family — it’s reportedly sitting in a warehouse in Jeddah with no clear departure date.

Remittances will keep flowing; wire transfers don’t need planes. In fact, personal remittances from overseas Filipinos reached $3.13 billion in March 2025, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas as reported by Rappler. But the emotional cargo? That’s grounded.

And if you’re an OFW yourself, reading this on a break between shifts in a Riyadh hospital or a Dubai mall, you’re doing the math. How long can this last? What happens if it gets worse? Do I wait it out, or do I find another way home before the decision gets made for me?

Editor’s Take

The Philippine government has gotten better at evacuation logistics since the Libya crisis in 2011, when it repatriated thousands of Filipinos. The systems exist. The funds are real. But the systems only activate when the situation is officially bad enough — and by the time Alert Level 4 is declared, the flights are already gone and the tickets are already expensive. We’ve built a safety net that catches people only after they’ve already started falling. Maybe that’s the best we can do with limited resources. Or maybe we’ve just gotten used to asking our overseas workers to carry the risk a little longer than we should.

Sources
Flights to Dubai, Riyadh canceled — Philippine Star
FAST FACTS: Gov’t aid for overseas Filipinos affected by Middle East war — Rappler
Your balikbayan box? It will have to wait — Rappler
March 8: PAL, Cebu Pacific cancel flights amid Middle East tensions — Philstar.com
DMW: UAE tops list with 397,892 deployments as 2.7 million OFWs leave in 2025 — The Global Filipino Magazine
OFWs rise to 2.19 million in 2024 — Philstar.com
DFA excludes UAE from ‘Crisis Alert Levels in the Middle East’ — Gulf Today
Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, as amended — OWWA
Overseas Filipinos’ remittances grow to $3.13 billion in March 2025 — Rappler
Last Updated: March 13, 2026 | 2:00 PM PHT