Dubai Airports said a total of 116 arriving and 121 departing flights were cancelled, 44 inbound flights were diverted following Emirates EK521 incident on Wednesday.
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Video clips circulated on social media showed thick black smoke billowing from the centre of the plane, which was on ground. All 282 passengers and 18 crew members were safely evacuated.
All departures from Dubai International Airport have been halted “until further notice”, it added. “We can confirm that there are no fatalities among our passengers and crew”.
Sheikh Ahmed said the investigations are still ongoing, stressing “Our priority is now the health and safety of our passengers”. More happily, there has also been very strong praise for the courage and professionalism of the pilots, cabin crew and emergency response workers after they evacuated all of the passengers from the aircraft prior to fire breaking out. While there were the expected delays of 4 hours or more, airlines did ensure that passengers were rebooked onto new flights, or they were transported to alternative airports for their flights.
The GCAA said he was killed in an explosion that happened while firefighters were battling the blaze.
Smoke coming from the plane. The airlines said this was primarily as Dubai airport has announced limited operations up to August 5.
The airline says the 300 people onboard included 226 from India, 24 Britons and 11 Emiratis. “We are operating some of our Dubai flights to Sharjah and Abu Dhabi”, a Jet Airways spokesperson said.
According to Quest, Dubai-based Emirates is the largest airline in the world by available seat kilometers, while Dubai (DBX) is now the busiest global airport for worldwide passengers.
Officials said the plane had undergone maintenance in 2015 and that the United Arab Emirates pilot had over 7,000 hours of flying experience.
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Dubai Airports apologises to all our passengers for the inconvenience resulting from the disruption and would like to assure them that we are doing everything in our capacity to ease their journey.
