Dear valued customers,
We apologize for the inconvenience caused to everyone who had their travel plans disrupted during this week. The UAE experienced the highest rainfall in 75 years, which resulted in record storms. The storm winds and rain disrupted activity in the cities, causing problems for our customers, pilots, cabin crew, and airport employees. Flooded roads made it difficult for our customers and essential supplies like meals and other flight amenities to reach the airport.
To manage the situation and take care of our customers, we suspended check-ins for passengers departing from Dubai, implemented an embargo on ticket sales, and temporarily halted connecting passenger traffic from points across our network coming into Dubai. We deployed additional resources to help our airport and contact centre teams with rebooking and put on extra flights to destinations where we identified many displaced customers. Over 12,000 hotel rooms have been secured to accommodate disrupted customers in Dubai, 250,000 meal vouchers have been issued, and more quantities of drinking water, blankets, and other amenities have been distributed.
We understand and acknowledge the frustration of our customers due to congestion, lack of information, and confusion in the terminals. We have used the lessons of the last few days to correct our mistakes and improve our processes. We would like to thank our teams across the airline and our 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.
We are happy to announce that our regular flight schedules have been restored as of this morning, Saturday, 20 April. Passengers stranded in the airport transit area have been rebooked and are en route to their destinations. We have assembled a task force to sort, reconcile, and deliver 30,000 pieces of left-behind baggage to their owners. However, we will need a few more days to clear the backlog of rebooked passengers and bags, and we ask for our customers’ patience and understanding.
Once again, we apologize for the disruption and offer our apologies on behalf of ourselves and all the teams across the Emirates. We will continue working hard to meet your expectations and our Fly Better brand promise.
Thank you.
