The exact circumstances of the accident, which involved a Boeing 777 flying from India with 300 people on board, were not immediately clear.
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The accident took place a little after 1245 local time, when 777-300 A6-EMW, operating EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India, to Dubai, skidded along Runway 12L before shortly bursting into flames.
In a statement, Emirates Airlines said that five passengers on the Thiruvanthapuram flight were brought to local hospitals with minor injuries.
Budget passenger carrier SpiceJet, too, cancelled all its flights to Dubai which were to be operated on Thursday.
All IndiGo passengers are requested to check their respective flight status via customer relations or Twitter/Facebook or the airline’s web portal, it said.
Flight Radar, a third party website say that fights that were scheduled to arrive at DXB were diverted to multiple airport Muscat, Bahrain and Al Ain. “In total, over 23,000 Emirates passengers were impacted by the disruption”.
The airline refused for a second day to provide details on what caused the crash and what the circumstances were immediately before it hit the ground.
“We left by going down the emergency slides and as we were leaving on the runway we could see the whole plane catch fire; it was horrifying”.
“Emirates cancelled 27 flights yesterday, and there were delays and rescheduled flights across the network”, an Emirates spokesperson said.
Below, an Indian passenger on the plane recounts the ordeal.
The Emirates Airline said that one firefighter was killed while putting out a fire caused by a plane crash-landing earlier on Wednesday (Aug 3).
The recorders, also known as “black boxes”, will be analyzed at its facility in the federal capital, Abu Dhabi.
Chicago-based Boeing said it is prepared to deploy a technical team to assist with the investigation in coordination with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
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Investigators expect to issue a preliminary report on the crash within a month. However, a firefighter, Jassim Al-Baloushi, died while responding to the emergency. “This clearly appears to be what has happened”, he said.
