The United Arab
Emirates is used to oppressive heat but the Dubai International Airport, one of
the busiest in the world, was not prepared for the unprecedented amount of
rainfall this past week.
Or was it?
Although this would
be comparable to a foot of snow falling in Miami, Dubai airport officials did an
outstanding job in getting airlines back up and running within three to four
days.
That prompted the
president of global carrier Emirates Airlines, Sir Tim Clark, to pen an open letter to customers
regarding the situation.
Emirates Airlines President's Apology Letter
"To all our valued customers,
This week has been one of the toughest for Emirates
operationally, as record storms hit the United Arab Emirates.
I would like to offer our most sincere apologies to every
customer who has had their travel plans disrupted during this time.
On Tuesday 16 April, the UAE experienced its highest
rainfall in 75 years. Lashing storm winds and rain disrupted activity across
the cities. Our 24/7 hub in Dubai remained open, with flight movements reduced
for safety, but 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 diverted dozens of flights to avoid the worst of the
weather on Tuesday, and over the next 3 days we had to cancel nearly 400
flights and delay many more, as our hub operations remained challenged by
staffing and supply shortages.
We were clear on our 2 priorities: Look after our
customers who have been impacted by the disruption and get our operations back
on schedule.
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.
As of this morning, Saturday 20 April, our regular flight
schedules have been restored. Passengers previously stranded in the airport
transit area have been rebooked and are enroute to their destinations. We have
put together a taskforce to sort, reconcile, and deliver some 30,000 pieces of
left-behind baggage to their owners.
It will take us some more days to clear the backlog of
rebooked passengers and bags, and we ask for our customers’ patience and
understanding.
We know our response has been far from perfect. 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.
I’d like to also acknowledge and 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.
Finally, and once again, I want to offer, on behalf of
myself, and all the teams across Emirates, our apologies to each and every
customer affected by this disruption.
We will continue to work hard to live up to your
expectations, and to our Fly Better brand promise.
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