‘Regular flight schedules restored today; our response far from perfect:’ Emirates president Tim Clark

NEW DELHI: Mega carrier Emirates is restoring regular flights from Saturday (April 20), days after unprecedented rains lashed the UAE — especially Dubai — this Monday. Dubai Airports had temporarily limited the number of inbound flights to fix affected systems. All airlines’ schedules to and from Dubai have been severely impacted since Monday.
“As of this morning, Saturday April 20, our regular flight schedules have been restored.Passengers previously stranded in the airport transit area have been rebooked and are enroute to their destinations. We have put together a task force to sort, reconcile, and deliver some 30,000 pieces of left-behind baggage to their owners. 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,” Emirates president Tim Clark said in an open letter.
He acknowledged that Emirates’s “response has been far from perfect. We acknowledge and understand the frustration of our customers due to the congestion, lack of information, and confusion in the terminals. We acknowledge that the long queues and wait times have been unacceptable.”
Emirates is the largest foreign airline in terms of operations to and from India. On a standalone basis, it is the third largest airline for flying passengers in and out of India after IndiGo and Air India. DGCA data shows in October-December 2023 India had 1.7 crore international passengers (arriving and departing) of which Emirates carried 8.1% or roughly 13.8 lakh. So on an average over 15,000 people fly Emirates daily between Indian cities and DXB, with a significant number of them being transiting via Dubai International. Apart from point-to-point travellers, Dubai also sees a lot of transfer traffic between India and rest of the world on Emirates' flights.
The UAE received its heaviest rainfall in last 75 years this week. “This week has been one of the toughest for Emirates operationally, as record storms hit the United Arab Emirates. I would like to offer our most sincere apologies to every customer who has had their travel plans disrupted during this time,” Tim Clark's letter says.
“On Tuesday, April 16, the UAE experienced its highest rainfall in 75 years… Our 24/7 hub in Dubai remained open, with flight movements reduced for safety, but flooded roads impeded the ability of our customers, pilots, cabin crew, and airport employees to reach the airport, and also the movement of essential supplies like meals and other flight amenities. 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,” Clarks’ letter says.
He details how the airline, along with the airport, tried to get things back on track. “To free up resources and capacity to manage impacted customers as a priority, we had to suspend check-in for passengers departing Dubai; implement an embargo on ticket sales and temporarily halt connecting passenger traffic from points across our network coming into Dubai. 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.”
“We sent over 100 employee volunteers to look after disrupted customers at Dubai Airport departures and in the transit area, prioritising medical cases, the elderly and other vulnerable travellers. To date, over 12,000 hotel rooms were secured to accommodate disrupted customers in Dubai, 250,000 meal vouchers have been issued, and more quantities of drinking water, blankets, and other amenities.