Emirates Resumes Regular Flight Schedules

After unusual floods earlier this week disrupted flight movements in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Emirates Airline resumes regular flight schedules on Saturday, April 20. 

The airline’s president, Tim Clark, expressed regret to all customers whose trip plans were ruined by the recent harsh weather in an open letter.

“As of this morning, Saturday 20 April, our regular flight schedules have been restored. Passengers previously stranded in the airport transit area have been rebooked and are en route to their destinations,” he said.

“It will take us some more days to clear the backlog of rebooked passengers and bags, and we ask for our customers’ patience and understanding,” he added.

Emirates has assembled a task force to arrange, reconcile, and return about 30,000 items of baggage that were left behind to their owners.

The UAE saw its highest rainfall on Tuesday, April 16, in 75 years. Rain and savage storm gusts interrupted citywide operations. 

“We diverted dozens of flights to avoid the worst of the weather on Tuesday, and over the next three days we had to cancel nearly 400 flights and delay many more, as our hub operations remained challenged by staffing and supply shortages,” Clark said.

Emirates was forced to impose an embargo on ticket sales, temporarily stop connecting passenger traffic from locations across our network coming into Dubai, and postpone check-in for passengers leaving Dubai to free up resources and capacity to handle affected customers as a priority. 

“We deployed additional resources to aid our airport and contact centre teams with rebooking and put on additional flights to destinations where we identified large numbers of displaced customers,” Clark added.

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