Emirates and flydubai resume regular flight schedules in wake of regional storms

Following severe storms that left numerous flights and much of the city disrupted earlier this week, airlines including Emirates and flydubai have resumed operations.

“flydubai has returned to operating its full flight schedule from Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 at Dubai International (DXB). Our focus over the coming days continues to be on our passengers whose travel plans have been impacted,” said a flydubai spokesperson on 20 April.

The airline has advised that passengers who booked via flydubai.com and whose bookings were cancelled have been contacted via email for their refund or rebooking options, while those who booked through a Travel Agent are advised to contact them directly for their refund or rebooking options. Passengers due to travel are still advised to check the flight status on flydubai.com, and if their flight is going ahead, to check in online before they leave for the airport. The airline has also requested that for enquiries that not related to the disruption and that are not immediately urgent, customers please consider contacting its customer service team in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, Emirates has published an open letter to its customers from its president, Sir Tim Clark.

“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. On Tuesday 16 April, the UAE experienced its highest rainfall in 75 years. Lashing storm winds and rain disrupted activity across the cities. 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,” Clark said.

“We diverted dozens of flights to avoid the worst of the weather on Tuesday, and over the next 3 days we had to cancel nearly 400 flights and delay many more, as our hub operations remained challenged by staffing and supply shortages. We were clear on our 2 priorities: Look after our customers who have been impacted by the disruption and get our operations back on schedule,” he continued.

Clark explained that to free up resources and capacity to manage impacted customers as a priority, Emirates 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. Behind the scenes, it was all hands-on deck for thousands more employees across the organisation to get our operations back on track,” Clark said.

As of the morning of Saturday 20 April, Emirates’ regular flight schedules have been restored, with passengers previously stranded in the airport transit area rebooked and are enroute to their destinations. “We have put together a taskforce to sort, reconcile, and deliver some 30,000 pieces of left-behind baggage to their owners,” Clark said, appealing to customers to be patient and understanding while Emirates works to clear the backlog of rebooked passengers and bags.

Clark has also, in a video interview conducted with the UAE’s Virgin Radio’s Kris Fade, requested for passengers to not come to the airport more than two hours earlier than their flight time – if their flight is going ahead – explaining that doing so would worsen the level of congestion already in Dubai International airport’s terminals.

“We know our 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. We take our commitment to our customers very seriously, and we have taken learnings from the last few days to make things right and improve our processes,” Clark said, finishing with an acknowledgment thanking Emirates’ teams, as well as its many suppliers and partners “for their tireless efforts around the clock this week, despite the challenging conditions, to support customers, recover our network, and bring our operating schedule back to normal.”