UAE | Traffic and Transport
Confused passengers tell their stories
Passengers stranded at Dubai Airport have spoken of the chaos after an aircraft skidded off the runway on Monday morning.
- Gulf News report
- Published: 00:00 March 12, 2007
Dubai: Passengers stranded at Dubai Airport have spoken of the chaos after an aircraft skidded off the runway on Monday morning.
Kamyar Broumane, a Belgian businessman of Iranian descent, missed his 8am connecting flight from Dubai to Paris when the Emirates flight from Tehran to Dubai he was travelling on was diverted to Fujairah.
“We were due to land at 6.40am but the pilot was making circles around Dubai. Everybody thought it was traffic, but then he announced we were being diverted because there had been an incident – he said a plane was trying to take off but a wheel broke and it slid off the runway.
“There are quite a lot of people here who were due to transit in Dubai and who wanted to catch other flights. We are just sitting here getting a bit frustrated – they said there would be buses to take us to Dubai but they haven't arrived yet,'' he said.
Ed Barnfield, a General manager from the United Kingdom was due to take off for Nice on an Emirates flight at 7.30am.
“Initially we thought it was just the Gulf flights that had been cancelled, but later on London, Frankfurt and other long-haul flights were announced as cancellations as well.
“There are a lot of people here waiting and tempers have frayed a little bit,'' he said.
Barnfield added that there was “a scrum'' around the information desks at the airport with passengers struggling to find out exactly what is happening.
“They could do with informing people a bit better. The information services are totally overstretched,'' he said.
He said an Emirates staff member told him all flights were being held until 4pm.
Sanjay Swami, and his wife were due to take the Jazeera airways flight J457 to Kuwait at 11.45 and had checked out of their hotel.
Having arrived at the airport he was told the flight has now been delayed for 12 hours and will take off past midnight.
Were you caught up in the incident? Did you see anything? Was your flight cancelled or diverted? Send your stories to Gulf News by filling in the form below.
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