In early March, due to the unexpected war in the ME, I was contemplating my next move. Should I stay or leave? Flights were still taking off from Dubai, albeit at a limited frequency. Enterprising car rental companies were offering package deals to wealthy expats where they'd drive you to Oman and get you on a plane to wherever (Oman was more open so there were more flights to more places).
While I could afford to leave Dubai, it was not necessarily cheap. A one-way nonstop economy ticket to Europe was costing ~700 euros. I also wasn't desperate to leave. My day-to-day was still fairly comfortable. I still had food, water, and Internet. I still felt safe going for a run outdoors, and the dystopian atmosphere was growing on me. I was in a good work rhythm which I didn't want to disrupt by travel. I just had to calm my parents down daily, since the international media and AI fake news was having a field day at Dubai's expense. And deal with emergency alerts which sounded once a day on average.
Then debris from a drone hit a building near mine, causing a fire in some unlucky dude's balcony. Luckily, I didn't have to evacuate but many residents in nearby buildings did. It started to feel that this war wasn't going to end anytime soon. And what if UAE runs out of anti-drone defenses before Iran runs out of drones? I didn't want to wait for that to happen. I booked a one-way nonstop refundable ticket to Europe on the next available Emirates flight.
About a day later, I received an email from SafetyWing saying they'd cover my transportation costs should I decide to leave Dubai. They also added an attention-grabbing banner to their homepage to the same effect. It was a nice surprise. And damn classy (and smart) of them to proactively email their members about it, because it's a triple win. They reduce further exposure, their members get incentivized to leave a high-risk situation, and they make their members happy.
It was my first time filing a health insurance claim for a large sum and hopefully it will be my last. I'm now in Europe waiting for the situation to cool down, so I can return to Dubai. Unfortunately, SafetyWing won't cover my return ticket haha.