Duty of Care Under Pressure in
Mining Travel
Duty of care under pressure: what two crises taught us about keeping FIFO travellers safe
Most companies have a duty of care policy. Far fewer have had to test it in real time, with crews in transit, flights cancelled and phone lines down.
Over the past year, we did it twice. Two separate crises disrupted travel for one of our clients, a multinational mining company whose FIFO crews work in remote and, at times, politically unstable regions. Between them, the two events affected 163 travellers: people already in transit, people on site and people booked to travel in the days ahead.
This is how we handled both, what happened to every traveller, and what we’d tell any company that moves people through remote or unstable regions.
Two crises, four months apart
In Tanzania, protests broke out on election day, 29 October 2025. The authorities responded with a nationwide 6pm–6am curfew and an internet blackout. Flights to and from Dar es Salaam were cancelled, leaving travellers stuck at airports.
Four months later, conflict escalated in the Middle East. On 28 February 2026, Gulf states shut or restricted their airspace, and Emirates and Flydubai halted every flight in and out of Dubai. Aviation data firm Cirium counted more than 11,000 cancellations across the region in the conflict’s opening days, and the UAE’s airspace reopened only in stages during March.
Tanzania: when the lines went down
Within hours of the first reports, we were in continuous contact with our client’s key people, and we stayed that way for the full 10 days of the disruption. When the internet was shut down across the country, we switched to SMS and ordinary phone calls, sending travellers short summaries of their tickets by text so they had everything they needed without data.
We knew exactly who was moving. We kept full manifests of every traveller heading to or from site. When flights were cancelled or routes became unsafe, we could offer clear, safe rerouting options straight away, through Zanzibar and Nairobi instead of Dar es Salaam. We didn’t have to piece the picture together first.
We followed every journey to the end. We tracked each traveller until they had safely boarded their flight: not until a ticket was issued, but until they were on board.
We kept the client informed. With networks down, travellers couldn’t always reach their employer. We kept the client’s HR team updated on every traveller’s status, so they knew exactly where their people were.
We didn’t leave anyone on their own. The longest case was a traveller stranded at a hotel in Dar es Salaam on the way to a connecting flight. The airport closed and then the curfew came into force, so they couldn’t leave the city. For a week, we worked directly with the traveller and the hotel to monitor their security, checking in several times a day. When the airport reopened and the client and its insurer confirmed it was safe to travel, we got them out.
The Gulf: when the hubs closed
Many international rotations connect through the Gulf hubs, so the closures hit crew changes immediately. From the moment the conflict began, we tracked every one of our client’s travellers routed through the Middle East. We monitored all live bookings through our Global Distribution System (GDS) and worked closely with the client’s teams.
We looked ahead, not just at today. As well as the people already travelling, we kept detailed lists of all travel booked 7 to 14 days out. That let us deal with upcoming trips before they became problems. It also meant we claimed airline refunds for our client early instead of leaving them unclaimed, 163 tickets in total.
We held the line on policy, so managers didn’t have to. Our client’s policy was clear: no travel on Middle Eastern carriers while the conflict continued. Several travellers asked to keep their existing bookings on those carriers. We applied the policy directly and confidently and rebooked them via Addis Ababa and Istanbul. We also handled their questions about the new routes and any overnight accommodation needed for long layovers ourselves.
We stayed with the traveller until they were moving. The longest case was a crew member stranded in Dubai for eight days. We worked every day to find a way out and finally secured a seat on a repatriation flight to Australia. Once it was confirmed, we didn’t send an email and hope for the best. We checked in the afternoon before the flight and stayed in contact through the evening and overnight. We only signed off once the aircraft had left the ground and we knew they were on their way.
Key results and impact
Every traveller affected by both events got home or reached site safely. Policy was applied consistently throughout. The only escalations to the client’s management were the approvals the policy requires, and airline refunds were claimed early instead of being left to expire.
“In a crisis, nobody wants a reference number. They want someone who knows where they are, knows what needs to happen next, and will still be answering in the middle of the night.”
Andrea Harvey, Senior Manager, Approver Travel
Five lessons for any travel programme
- Know where everyone is before you need to. A crisis is the worst time to start building a list. Keep a live view of who’s in transit, who’s on site and who’s booked over the next one to two weeks. With that in place, you spend the first hour making decisions instead of finding people.
- Decide the rules before the crisis, then let your travel management company hold the line. Agree in advance which routes, hubs or carriers to avoid when a region becomes unstable, and who can approve an exception. Then give your travel management company the authority to apply those rules. Travellers get clear, consistent answers, and your managers aren’t pulled into every individual request.
- Stay with the traveller until they’re moving. A confirmed booking isn’t the finish line, because plenty can go wrong between the confirmation email and the boarding gate. Stay in contact until the traveller has boarded. For anyone stuck for days, set regular check-in times so they’re never left wondering what’s happening.
- Plan for the day the internet stops working. Network shutdowns tend to come at the worst possible moment, and internet-based apps go down with them. Keep up-to-date contact details for every traveller, and agree backup channels in advance that don’t rely on data, such as SMS and ordinary phone calls.
- Don’t leave refunds on the table. When airlines cancel at scale, they open refund and rebooking windows, and those windows close. Etihad, for example, gave passengers whose travel fell in the disruption period until 15 June 2026 to rebook free of charge or take a refund. Reviewing upcoming bookings early turns a disrupted schedule into recovered spend, instead of a pile of unused tickets discovered months later.
What we'd do differently
The biggest change we made after the Gulf closures was how often we update clients during a fast-moving crisis. Our team was already working around the clock to monitor flights, reroute travellers and find alternatives, but we realised regular updates matter as much as the solution itself. We now communicate earlier and more often, even when nothing has changed yet, so clients and travellers know we’re watching the situation and already working on the next option before they have to ask.
Duty of care is what happens at 3am
Most mining companies have a duty of care policy. The difference shows when a region closes overnight and your people are in the middle of it.
Our client treats safety as a core value, and so do we. It sits at the centre of how we run their travel, not as a separate layer on top. Part of our job is also taking the day-to-day load off their managers. We explain policy to travellers, manage expectations about allowances, and handle the questions that would otherwise land on someone’s desk in the middle of a crisis.