After the flood, Dubai airport in chaos. Flights canceled or with endless delays

The Emirates website acts as if nothing had happened: The homepage opens with ‘Discover the wonders of Perth’, welcomes the user and then proceeds with the usual stuff. That of the other domestic company, Flydubai, does the same, opening with a 480 euro ‘Fly non-stop to Dubai’. No warnings, no alerts.

But ‘fly non-stop to Dubai’or ‘from Dubai’ we add, it is impossible or almost impossible in these hours. Everyone saw it on social media on Tuesday 16 April videos of the city streets flooded and the airport transformed into a swimming pool, with a Flydubai 737 MAX that recklessly makes its way through the waters as if it were a new Moses.

Of course, a year and a half’s worth of rainfall fell in Dubai in just a few hours (or, at least, that’s what we were told). But it is equally true that if you concrete and asphalt everything, as they have done in Dubai (and not only) in the last fifteen years, how do you drain the water when it rains a little more than usual?

And in fact, once the torrential rains had passed, the next day (i.e. today 17 April) the situation did not appear to have improved, as far as flooding was concerned. And Dubai airport, where hundreds of flights had already been canceled or delayed on Tuesday, was plunged into chaos todaywhen Emirates has announced that no check-in operations will be carried out from 8am until midnight today 17 April. This is because the high water on the runways, transformed into a copy of Piazza San Marco before Mose, makes it impossible to load luggage into the holds of the planes.

The images you see accompanying this article, which were there sent by a desperate reader of The Flight Club (by the way, thanks!), they show a Terminal 3 that isn’t even in Mecca during the peak of the pilgrimage: a carpet of heads and bodies extends as far as the eye can see near one of the information points dedicated to passengers. “We are in a kind of limbo, we cannot collect our bags and we cannot leave the airport because the city, we have been told, is in a sort of lockdown. We had a connecting flight to the Maldives, but it was canceled and no one can tell us what will happen in the next few hours.”

Another reader wrote to us that he had extended his stay by a day, having not even managed to reach the airport.

In reality, at least according to what was reported by Flightradar24 and in relation to Emirates’ operations in Italy, not all flights were cancelled. But the delays are very serious: the EK205 Dubai-Milan (the one which then continues from Malpensa to JFK in New York as EK206) had a scheduled departure time of 9.15 this morning, but take-off is now scheduled for 18.39, i.e. over nine hours later; the other flight to Milan, EK91 scheduled at 3.45pm and will leave (maybe, who knows) at 5.45pm.

Same delay (nine hours) expected for the EK97 Dubai-Romewhich was due to leave the Emirate at 9.10 this morning, while the EK95 is given with a two hour delay (and even in this case perhaps, who knows). The 9.20am EK 93 Dubai-Bologna has been cancelledto, while the EK193 for Venice made it, despite taking off at 3.20pm instead of 9.05am.

FlyDubaifor its part, has directly canceled its two flights to Bergamo, the one to Naples and the one to Catania, while the flight to Pisa took off at 10.32 with over three hours’ delay.

In short, a very difficult situation it will have repercussions on the operations of the two Dubai companies for days and days. As long as the weather is mild, as fortunately it seems to be, at least according to the 10-day forecast on weather.com.

Obviously, the advice to all readers of The Flight Club is to find out well in advance about the operation of their flights to and from Dubai in the next days.