A spokesperson for Emirates airlines said the aircraft was involved in an “operational incident” during its scheduled landing from Trivandrum International Airport at about 12.45pm local time (9.45am BST). He said the airline would cooperate fully with local authorities during the investigation.
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“We do not have yet all the information”. “Our thoughts are with everyone involved”.
The airport resumed operations with reduced capacity around four hours after a Boeing 777 flying from India with 300 people on board crash-landed and caught fire.
The paper covers the southern Indian state of Kerala, of which Thiruvananthapuram is the capital.
Photos showed the smoke thickening after the plane came to a stop, rising into the air in a black plume before a fireball exploded from near the right engine on Wednesday afternoon.
No cause has so far been established for the crash, but images shared on social media suggest a belly-landing, which occurs when an aircraft lands without its landing gear fully extended.
A crash landing closes one of the world’s busiest airports for hours…
Emirates predicted there would be an eight-hour delay at operations across the network, disrupting travel plans for thousands of passengers during the busy summer vacation season.
Firefighters soon managed to bring the fire under control, with Associated Press journalists at the airport reporting that the charred fuselage of the plane appeared to no longer be burning. “We hadn’t heard any announcement, but it was a big noise”.
It says the Boeing 777 plane had 275 passengers onboard. People screaming. And the rush to escape.
“All the people were shouting, all the children, all the women”, said Arun Krishna, an Indian national.
Asked what the flight attendants said, Kochuktty offered just one word: “Escape!” The top of the aircraft was scorched brown from near the cockpit back to its tail. Flat-screen televisions showed all incoming Emirates flights delayed or rescheduled. All on board survived the major accident and were evacuated from the plane safely. “My wife and I suffered minor injuries”, he said. Now video has surfaced from inside flight EK521, and it looks like hell on Earth.
It said authorities were “dealing with the incident at the moment to ensure safety of all” and that all departures from the airport had been halted until further notice.
Dubai’s media office has confirmed that emergency teams have been activated to respond to a crash landing at the main Dubai International Airport, and that all passengers and crew have been safely evacuated. It handled some 78 million passengers previous year.
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Both the airline and aircraft have a solid safety record. The two airlines operate independently of one another, though they share the same chairman and are both ultimately owned by the government of Dubai.
