It was a close shave for passengers on board an Emirates flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Dubai, which crash landed at the Dubai International Airport on Wednesday.
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Footage posted online showed flames bursting out of the front and clouds of black smoke. “All passengers and crew are accounted for and safe.”, stated the UAE press information bureau.
Shot by a passenger on the plane (which is itself surprising since everyone was in the midst of an evacuation), the video shows flyers delaying the exit by stopping to remove their overhead luggage.
As people continued attempts to collect their suitcases a crew member shouted: “Leave everything, leave the bags, jump on the slide”.
As passengers wait on the slide, the camera lingers on one of the Emirates flights’ engines which is clearly on fire.
Several flights have since been cancelled or delayed due to the incident, with Emirates reporting that it is still in “recovery mode” as far as its normal scheduling is concerned.
But a number of Kerala passengers inside Emirates flight EK521 thought the other way round and wasted time to pull out bags. All on board survived the major accident and were evacuated from the plane safely. Dubai International Airport gradually started to resume operations at approximately 6.30pm local time last night.
The GCAA said he was killed in an explosion that happened while firefighters were battling the blaze.
“The Consulate General in Dubai is in close cooperation with the local authorities, with good cooperation received”, Wisma Putra said in a statement on Wednesday.
No official reason for the incident has been announced as of Thursday, but CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said images of plane suggest the front landing gear of the aircraft could have collapsed.
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Emirates said flight disruptions are expected till Friday. There were 226 Indian citizens on board the flight, as well as 24 United Kingdom nationals and 11 UAE nationals. Fortunately no casualties were reported on the airplane even though a firefighter subsequently died while rushing to the emergency spot.
