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Delays, cancellations at Dubai airport after crash-landing

The UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has said that an global investigation team led by the Air Accident Investigation Sector (AAIS) of the GCAA will probe the cause of the accident involving an Emirates Boeing 777-300 aircraft at the Dubai worldwide Airport yesterday. “We hadn’t heard any announcement but it was a big noise”. “People were screaming and we had a very hard landing”.

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The Dubai government’s official media office separately said that all passengers were “evacuated safely and no injuries have been reported so far”.

Emirates is the largest single operator of the Boeing 777, as well as the Airbus A380 superjumbo, and expanded its fleet to 250 aircraft a year ago.

On July 26, an Emirates Boeing 777-300 aircraft heading to the Maldives made an emergency landing in Mumbai because of a “technical fault”.

The plane flies from southern Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram to Dubai.

Airline chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said a Dubai firefighter died while trying to put out the flames. Winds of 39 kilometers an hour (24 mph) blew toward the northwest at the airfield, according to the UAE’s National Center for Meteorology and Seismology. Wind shear is a sudden downdraft encountered by aircraft that can be unsafe, especially for planes near the ground. “When smoke engulfed the flight, we realised there was something amiss and felt there was some danger”, he said.

Flight attendants jumped out of their seats as the plane screeched to a stop, opening emergency doors on the craft and inflating the emergency slides.

Finally, bright light fills the video as the person filming comes outside the plane, pausing only for a moment to look at a burning jet engine on the damaged plane’s wing before fleeing to safety. “Leave your bags behind!” as many passengers scrambled for their luggage in the overhead compartments.

The GCAA said he was killed in an explosion that happened while firefighters were battling the blaze.

The fire burned away the top of the airplane’s fuselage, singeing the Emirates name in gold. “What more can we ask for?” the Dubai-based businessman said, speaking to weekly newspaper XPRESS.

The authorities urged earlier in the day the passengers stranded in Dubai to check via email or text messages if their flights were rescheduled before going to the airport in case of delay or cancel. A cabin crew member was hospitalized and was expected to be released Thursday. By 4 p.m., some passengers onboard the flight began leaving, vouchers in their hands for hotels as they entered waiting taxis.

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“See, our belongings are gone that’s no problem”. Dubai resident Girisankal Gangadhakan said his wife called him after the plane landed to tell him that she and their three children onboard had been involved in an accident but were safe. “We have saved our life”.

A family that were passengers onboard an Emirates jetliner that crash landed are helped to a taxi in Dubai United Arab Emirates on Wednesday Aug. 3 2016. n Emirates flight from India with 300 people on board crash landed at Dubai's main airport Wednes