Middle East crisis: Emirates stop & go over drone crash at Dubai airport. Flights resumed a few hours later

It was a stop & go of just a few hours, that of Emirates. On the morning of March 7, the Dubai-based carrier had announced a new halt to all operations from its hub after an Iranian drone struck one of the airport's terminals. The warning issued to passengers contained the explicit message not to go to the airport for any reason.

The new interruption of all operations had come somewhat as a hoax, after Emirates itself had restored a partial schedule of its flights just 48 hours earlier, initially with a network of 33 destinations that was to increase to 106 just today, openly defying the Iranian ayatollahs and their missiles.

 

However, a few hours after the alarming message spread online and on social media, operations at Dubai International resumed, with passengers booked on afternoon flights being asked to go to the airport, subject, of course, to checking that their flight was actually operational. Uncertainty looms in the days ahead, even as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in the morning today apologized to the Gulf countries for the attacks his country has brought in recent days, promising that if not attacked by its neighbors, Iran in turn will cease all hostile activity toward them.

As for flights from Italy, they were only partially impacted by the stop & go: of the two connections from Rome, the operation of the 2:55 p.m. EK 98 (A380) was still uncertain at mid-afternoon, after EK 97 from Dubai left instead of 8:55 a.m. at 2:30 p.m. because of the drone alert, while the 8:50 p.m. EK 96 appears regularly scheduled.

Instead, the two connections from Milan operated regularly: the 10:25 a.m. EK 102 (B777-300ER) took off at 10:51 a.m. and landed in Dubai just before 8 p.m. local time, while the 1:55 p.m. EK 206 (A380) is scheduled to arrive just before 11 p.m.

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• middle east