Emirates has told passengers trying to leave Dubai that they won’t be able to check-in for their flights and they shouldn’t even bother trying to make it to Dubai International Airport (DXB) after historic foods swamped the airfield and surrounding access roads.
Dubai International Airport is trying to resume partial operations on Wednesday, but with parts of the airfield still under inches of water, Emirates told passengers that it had shuttered all check-in facilities out of DXB between 8 am and midnight, although later extended the closure to 9 am on Thursday.
There are scores of delays and cancellations, but Emirates will still try to serve passengers who are transiting through Dubai Airport, although thousands of passengers have found themselves stranded in the terminal and have been forced to sleep on the floor and benches.
Following heavy rainfall throughout Tuesday, Dubai Airport started to divert all inbound flights to alternative airfields in the region, while some departures did still go ahead – albeit with heavy delays.
FlyDubai said it had managed to resume ‘partial operations’ from 10 am on Wednesday with select flights operating out of Terminal 2. Regularly scheduled operations are expected to resume from 8 pm out of Terminal 2, while flights scheduled to depart out of Terminal 3 won’t restart until midnight.
In a statement, Dubai Airport urged passengers not to come to the airport “unless absolutely necessary”. A spokesperson noted: “We are working hard to recover operations as quickly as possible in very challenging conditions.”
Weather conditions are expected to ease throughout Wednesday after more than a year’s worth of rain fell across all seven emirates in a 24-hour period. Dubai has been particularly affected by flooding, and residents have been urged to stay home as roads have turned into rivers.
Video taken from Dubai Airport showed parts of the airfield covered in inches of water as some aircraft still attempted to take off and land. Officially, the airport was only closed to all inbound and outbound traffic for 25 minutes on Tuesday afternoon.
CLEARLY, there will be retrofitting of adequate drainage system that previously was either not considered because of climate location or simply ignored.
This happens at least twice every year. There’s no sewer in Dubai to drain into.