226 Indian citizens, 24 people from the UK and 11 citizens of the United Arab Emirates were reportedly involved in the crash.
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Emirates Flight 521 was inbound from Trivandrum International Airport in India when the 777 was forced to make the impromptu landing, reportedly due to a problem with the plane’s landing gear.
Emirates airline Boing 777 which crash-landed in Dubai had 282 passengers and 18 crew members on board.
Flights at Dubai International resumed at 6.30pm on Wednesday (2330 AEST) after all arrivals and departures were suspended for over five hours, authorities said. Footage on social media showed thick black smoke billowing from the aircraft.
But as soon as the plane touched down at Dubai International Airport, everyone knew something had gone wrong.
Two Australians were on board the flight, one of them reportedly the plane’s co-pilot.
All seemed normal to the 300 people aboard the Emirates airliner as it flew past the world’s tallest building in hazy skies and made a slow left turn over the waters of the Persian Gulf.
“There have been accidents where 777s have been very badly damaged during a landing and yet we haven’t had a fire like that”, he said.
The flight departed at 10.19 a.m. from the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport and was scheduled to land at the Dubai International Airport at 12.50 p.m.
Over 78 million passengers (or about 214,000 per day) came through Dubai airport in 2015, up 66% since 2010. Fourteen people have been taken to the hospital. Reuters spoke to one unnamed man waiting for his relatives: “They said they’re safe and alright, but that they felt a great panic as the plane was on fire”.
Mr Learmount said the crew acted in line with protocol by evacuating all passengers.
However, a firefighter was killed as he battled the blaze that engulfed the plane after it crashed landed on the runway.
Due to this incident, Dubai International Airport was closed for a few hours this afternoon and a number of flights were cancelled, delayed or diverted.
Planes such as Emirates’ Boeing 777-300 are designed so that all passengers can escape within 90 seconds, Quest said.
There were no official word for the cause of the accident, but media reports said the landing gear collapsed and the plane slid and exploded.
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According to Quest, Dubai-based Emirates is the largest airline in the world by available seat kilometers (ASK) – the measure of an airline’s passenger carrying capacity – which multiplies seats available by distance flown.
