Travellers passing through Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah on Sunday, 27 September, faced an unusually heavy wave of disruption. A Khaleej Times tally showed 46 flights delayed and several others—including Flydubai’s FZ 1502 from Catania and Emirates’ EK 413 from Christchurch—outright cancelled. Operations were affected across every terminal at Dubai International, Zayed International (Abu Dhabi) and Sharjah International. The longest delay was an 18-hour hold on Etihad EY 858 from Sochi after weather-related airport closures in southern Russia. Routes to Central Asia, South Asia and Eastern Europe bore the brunt, with Moscow, Tashkent, Almaty and Mumbai services each running hours behind schedule. Air-traffic analysts said the bottlenecks stemmed from a “perfect storm” of late-arriving aircraft from weather-hit origin airports, rolling crew-duty timeouts and heightened security checks linked to the wider Gulf security environment. Although UAE airport authorities stressed that terminals remained fully operational, airlines urged passengers to arrive at least three hours before departure and to monitor websites or apps for live updates. For corporate travel managers sending staff through the UAE hub system, the episode underscores the value of flexible ticketing and real-time disruption alerts. Companies with critical same-day connections are advised to build longer layovers or consider contingency routings through Doha or Riyadh when schedules tighten. The government’s Smart Gates continue to process passengers in under four seconds, but the events of 27 September show that even world-class ground infrastructure can be strained when multiple external shocks converge. Forward-looking organisations may wish to revisit their duty-of-care policies to account for increasingly unpredictable regional operating conditions.
Source: Khaleej Times
