Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption

Emirates president Sir Tim Clark has written an open letter to customers after a storm and flash floods caused three days of severe disruption for the Dubai-based carrier.

The airline was forced to cancel nearly 400 flights and delay many more as a result of the extreme weather, which saw around 18 months of rain fall on the emirate in a single day.

This page on our forum details some of the disruption which resulted from the floods, including Emirates suspending ticket sales and check-in at Dubai International airport, and large crowds at connection desks.

Clark said that last week had been “one of the toughest for Emirates operationally”, and offered “our most sincere apologies to every customer who has had their travel plans disrupted during this time”.

He said that while the carrier’s 24/7 hub in Dubai had remained open – albeit with flight movements reduced for safety – “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 were clear on our two priorities: Look after our customers who have been impacted by the disruption and get our operations back on schedule,” said Clark.

“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.

“Behind the scenes, it was all hands-on deck for thousands more employees across the organisation to get our operations back on track.”

Regular flights were restored on Saturday 20 April, and Emirates has been in the process of sorting, reconciling and delivering around 30,000 pieces of left-behind luggage to their owners.

“We know our response has been far from perfect,” said Clark. “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.”

Were you caught up in the disruption last week? Have you experienced severe weather disruption at other airports? Let us know know your experiences on our forum.

emirates.com

Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption

Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption

Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption

Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption

Emirates president writes open letter following Dubai flood disruption