After days of waiting \u2013 with the help of three different drivers \u2013 Urqhart and his wife decided to travel by car from Doha to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia in the hopes of securing a new ticket.<\/p>\n
Urqhart told 1News he was not sure if the trip would pay off \u2013 but what followed was a \u201cwicked adventure\u201d that proved successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just talked to the people at reception. They organised some transport to get us from Doha to Riyadh.<\/p>\n
On arrival at the ticket desk in Riyadh, Urqhart said he expected to be \u201clet down a little bit\u201d and \u201chave to find some accommodation\u201d.<\/p>\n
But when he asked for a ticket \u201canywhere\u201d that he could to resume his intended journey \u2013 he was surprised at the response.<\/p>\n
![\"Lyndon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/lyndon-urqhart-DOZJXX5JQJHNFBQURRHLYHV45Q.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Lyndon Urqhart. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe managed to get a flight, which we\u2019re pretty elated about, that goes to Istanbul and then through to Vienna.\u201d<\/p>\n
Urqhart said when he arrives in Vienna, he will catch a train to the business conference in Cologne, before heading to back to Austria for a holiday.<\/p>\n
Refund process<\/p>\n
Urqhart said Qatar Airways assured himm he would get a refund for the return tickets from Doha to Cologne.<\/p>\n
He described the process as “quite good”. Although the new journey has added a slight extra cost, it provided “an experience we wouldn’t normally get”.<\/p>\n
‘Friendly’ but ‘pretty tense’ at times<\/p>\n
Before he had departed Doha, Urqhart said it was \u201cpretty tense\u201d when missiles were being shot down, but suggested afterwards, things returned somewhat to normal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know this sounds a bit strange but \u2013 with the exception of the missiles going off \u2013 when they’re not going off, you feel really safe.<\/p>\n
“Then you’ll get a strike for like half an hour or an hour, and you get pretty tense again as the building moves and different things like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then, when it dies down, the staff come out, everyone is really friendly\u2026 you wouldn\u2019t even really think much is going on, but then an airstrike will start, so you don\u2019t really get much sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kiwi pair took a seven-hour car trip through the desert to catch an alternative connecting flight to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,5107,43,40,38,41,39,1745],"class_list":["post-312013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}