A Canadian expatriate Jordan Ross had nothing but kind words to say to SalamAir and one of its employees who helped her family and their dog leave Oman on a charter to Doha.
Ross shared the touching story on What’s Happening Oman forum on Facebook, The Arabian Stories revealed.
Ross said that when her husband was laid off in April, the family tried their best to get home with their pet dog. However, due to repatriation flight restrictions, he was not able to fly in the cabin.
Despite this, Ross and her husband were convinced that they would find another way home.
Ross explained that her assistance dog was also diabetic and needed to fly in the cabin with them.
“He’s not only my assistance dog but is also diabetic. He can only fly in the cabin, which is not allowed on the repatriation flights.
“So we’ve been searching for another way home. I was losing hope. We were running out of money waiting for the airport to open. Then I found another American family who was in the same position. They had an assistance dog that couldn’t ride in the hold. So we put our heads together and thought it can’t hurt to approach SalamAir to organise a charter to Doha that would allow our request for accommodating the pets. From Doha we can transit to our home countries," she revealed.
Ross tried her best to fill the plane, her passion to get home and ensure that her dog was comfortable during the journey kept her motivated.
At first, everything was going smoothly. They had confirmation from 70 people, which they submitted to the airline and the flight was approved. However, there were many challenges before the family landed in Doha.
'“We had confirmation from 70 people. We submitted it to the airlines and it was accepted! A date and time were set. But when time came to book seats, many couldn’t commit due to the departure time, connection problems, costs, etc. We were devastated! We worked so hard to make this flight happen with our dogs on board," she recollected.
Ross remained optimistic. Majd, one of the employees for the airline, was empathetic towards the family and tried his best to ensure that the flight went ahead as planned.
He alerted the family that they were 20 tickets short of covering the flight cost and that they had an hour to sell them. Ross and her husband were so desperate to fly that they even offered to purchase 5 more flights.
"We had one hour to sell 20 more seats. My husband and I offered to buy 5 more seats! It would’ve emptied all our bank accounts but that’s how badly we needed this flight to happen. Majd recognised our commitment to this flight. So he said okay, hang on let me see what I can do.
"Majd got us an extension from Qatar and told us he would work to sell the remaining seats and give us the option to buy what we were still short. Then for the next 2 days, Majd worked day and night to sell more seats on this flight. I cannot stress enough how hard Majd worked for us,” she said in the post.
“I just started crying and crying. I know other passengers did too. How do we say thank you? SalamAir and Majd saved my family. They went above and beyond for us and other families who had no other way of getting home," she said.