Dubai International is by far the Mideast’s busiest airport, and is the world’s busiest air hub in terms of international passenger traffic.
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“We have cancelled all our 11 flights to Dubai for today due to non-availability of the runway at the Dubai International Airport”, an IndiGo spokesperson said. FlyDubai, the sheikhdom’s low-priced carrier, said it had cancelled 20 flights.
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 crew were praised for evacuating the plane so quickly which saved all 300 people onboard.
One firefighter, identified as Jassim Essa Al-Baloushi, was killed battling the fire – the Dubai government’s media office said he died “saving the lives of others”.
“We are informing our passengers through our call centres that whoever is coming from Dubai to Kerala should go to Sharjah to board the flight”, the sources said. The rest stayed in transit at the airport. “The idea is that you have to be able to evacuate an aircraft within 90 seconds if there is an accident on the ground”, Quest said.
Airline chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum said the plane had undergone maintenance in 2015 and that the pilot had over 7,000 hours of flying experience.
The incident led officials to shut Dubai International Airport for almost six hours, causing dozens of flights to be delayed or cancelled. The carrier says “all passengers and crew are accounted for and safe”.
There were questions as to why the plane’s landing gear appeared to have not been lowered as it came into land.
“People were screaming and we had a very hard landing”.
Flight attendants are heard yelling at passengers to “leave your bags behind!”.
According to Quest, Dubai-based Emirates is the largest airline in the world by available seat kilometers (ASK) – the measure of an airline’s passenger carrying capacity – which multiplies seats available by distance flown.
Emirates, Boeing Co, and aviation safety regulators will investigate the cause of the accident, a process that will probably take months.
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Meanwhile, Emirates, which had earlier announced setting up of a helpline for the US, UK and UAE, later operationalise one such helpline for India as well. It operates more than 120 of the twin-engine planes, more than any other airline. Although it reopened, it is now operating with one runway.
