DUBAI: Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest for international travel, was operating with only one of its two runways open on Thursday as authorities cleared the wreckage of an Emirates Boeing 777 that crashed and burned the previous day.
"Due to reduced capacity we are having to prioritise arriving and departing flights to make the best use of available runway to clear the backlog," the facility's operator, Dubai Airports, said in a statement.
Some incoming flights were delayed, cancelled or diverted to Dubai World Central, the emirate's other major airport which is mainly used for cargo traffic. India's SpiceJet said some of its flights were also being diverted to the emirates of Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah neighbouring Dubai.
Emirates, which is based at Dubai International, said it expected disuptions to its flights to continue for the next 36 hours. It did not elaborate.
All 300 passengers and crew were safely evacuated from the Emirates plane after the crash, which occurred when the crew apparently attempted unsuccessfully to abort a landing. One firefighter was killed on the ground.
Flights at Dubai International were completely suspended for over five hours on Wednesday, authorities said - a blow to Dubai's economy, which depends heavily on inflows of tourists from around the world and the emirate's role as a waystation for travel between Asia and Europe.
Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport expanded 7 percent from a year earlier to 34.65 million passengers in the first five months of this year.
After Dubai International Airport closed its airspace for about an hour because of unauthorised drone activity, the local Khaleej Times quoted Michael Rudolph, head of aviation regulations and safety at the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, as saying earlier this year that for every minute the airport stayed shut, the Dubai economy lost about $1 million.
Reuters
