Emirates has managed to get an Airbus A380, which was severely damaged when a service truck somehow got completely wedged underneath the double-deck superjumbo out of Moscow in order to skirt Western sanctions on Russia.
Last Wednesday, Emirates was forced to temporarily ground the 13-year-old aircraft just as it was preparing to operate a commercial passenger flight from Moscow Domodedovo Airport to Dubai when the service vehicle took a chunk out of the underbelly of the plane.
Thankfully, no one was injured in the incident, but the flight had to be cancelled and it was feared that the aircraft could be stranded in Moscow for some time it appeared as if extensive repairs would be required.
Those repairs, however, would be made more complicated by US and European sanctions on Russia, which prevent companies from importing spare parts of Western-built aircraft.
Although the United Arab Emirates has maintained diplomatic relations with Russia following President Putin’s war in Ukraine, the country must still abide by European Union sanctions.
Emirates has, though, found an easy way around those sanctions and has managed to fly the damaged aircraft (registration A6-EDM) back to Dubai as a special ferry service, which means that there weren’t any passengers onboard.
Although the flight took place on April 1, this was no April Fool Joke.
Using a special flight number that has previously been used for a couple of other ferry flights from Moscow to Dubai in recent months, data provided by Flight Radar 24 indicates that the A380 reached altitudes of 41,000 feet during the five-hour flight – a sign that the damage might not be as bad as first feared.
The flight departed Moscow at 2 am and landed without incident at Dubai International Airport at around 8 am. Emirates has its own engineering centre at DXB which is capable of performing heavy maintenance programmes.
In an earlier statement, Emirates said that “the safety of its passengers and crew is of paramount importance.”
