Twenty-seven people were injured on Monday when a Bangladeshi airliner was forced to abort its take-off from Dubai, prompting the closure of the region’s busiest airport for more than seven hours.
The Bangladesh Airlines plane, which had 229 people on board including crew members, was about to take off from the bustling Gulf emirate to Dhaka when the accident occurred, the Dubai civil aviation department said.
“There was a failure to take off and then the nose of the plane hit the ground,” spokesperson Shamma Lootah said.
Most of the injured were hurt “in the panic that erupted when the accident occurred”, she said, adding that most of the passengers were Bangladeshis.
Pictures showed the stricken Airbus A310 airliner with both engines on the tarmac, and black skid marks on the runway.
The airport reopened at 2pm local time, Dubai civil aviation department spokesperson Huraiz bin Huraiz said, seven-and-a-half hours after it was forced to close.
In all, 35 flights were diverted to nearby airports and 36 were cancelled or rescheduled, said Ghassan Amhaz, another civil aviation spokesperson.
Civil aviation authorities advised passengers to check with their airlines for the status of their flights after the reopening of the airport.
They said in a statement that 26 of the injured were treated at the airport’s medical centre and discharged within an hour, while one woman passenger was taken to hospital and later discharged.
An official at Rashed Hospital said that a British woman of Bengali origin was treated for minor injuries that required two stitches.
Dubai airport is the busiest in the Middle East, handling almost 29-million passengers last year.
The department of civil aviation said the accident was being investigated in coordination with the General Civil Aviation Authority, which oversees the aviation sector in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Dubai is the commercial and tourism hub of the oil-rich, seven-member UAE.
The airport’s departure hall was packed with passengers stranded by the closure, and the electronic flight indicator screens showed all flights had been delayed.
“We were told that the flight was cancelled and to go the ticket desk to rebook. But there are no seats today [Monday] or tomorrow. We have nowhere to go. They said hotels are all full,” said British tourist Rachel Blackwell (29).
Dubai airport is forecasting that it will handle 33-million passengers this year, rising to 70-million by 2008 through terminal expansion projects.
The facility handled a total of 237Â 258 flights in 2006, according to information on its website. It is connected to more than 194 destinations through a network of 113 international airlines.
An employee with Emirates said the company had cancelled about 17 flights.
A German tourist leaving the terminal said he and fellow passengers on an Air France flight to Paris were being taken to the airport in the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi to board a flight there.
“I was travelling to Bangalore in India with Emirates to see my father, who has cancer” and was only given a few hours to live by doctors, said Mohammad Assef, an Indian resident whose flight was delayed.
Another airport, which aims to be the world’s largest and to handle 120-million passengers a year, is under construction in Dubai. — AFP