All 300 people aboard an Emirates airliner survived a crash landing in Dubai on Wednesday, scrambling down emergency slides before flames consumed the plane in an accident that halted flights for hours at the world’s third-busiest airport.
Advertisement
All IndiGo passengers are requested to check their respective flight status via customer relations or Twitter/Facebook or the airline’s web portal, it said.
However, Air India carried their passengers on an emergency flight diverted to Dubai around 7 pm. “Thankfully there (were) no fatalities among our passengers and crew”, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, the airline’s chairman and CEO, said in a video statement. The airline said there were 226 Indians aboard the Boeing 777-300. This image made from video shows smoke rising after an Emirates flight crash landed at Dubai International Airport on Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2016.
“In the wake of the Emirates aircraft crash-landing at Dubai airport yesterday, and in accordance with the instructions from the Dubai Airport Authorities, all our flights to and from Dubai scheduled for today have been cancelled”, SpiceJet said in a statement. Emirates declined to confirm whether the landing gear had been successfully deployed.
The frustrated passengers then took to the middle of the terminal and vented their ire at the airport authorities, citing that they were not given a confirmation on when they would be airlifted to Dubai.
The Airport Director said the ATF samples and other data would be forwarded to the DGCA as and when they were sought. Flat-screen televisions showed all incoming Emirates flights delayed or rescheduled.
“I was shocked when I heard about that”, he said.
The Boeing 777 departed Thiruvananthapuram at 10:19 a.m. and was scheduled to land at 12:50 p.m. local time, according to Emirates.
The incident was the most serious to date for Emirates, it being the only loss for the airline since it started operations in 1985.
T.P. Seetharam, India’s ambassador to the UAE, said Indian diplomats had been dispatched to the airport and had met directly with many passengers.
“Many of them are in shock after such an event, and there may be minor bruises”, he said in a telephone interview from Abu Dhabi.
Dubai Media Office tweeted on Thursday, saying: “DXB resumed under restricted capacity & continued to operate with one runway, while maximising the use of the runway at DWC”. It handled some 78 million passengers past year.
Many of those travelers arrived aboard Emirates, by far the region’s biggest carrier.
Advertisement
The 777 model is one of the workhorses of Emirates’ fleet.
