Flight to nowhere: hundreds of passengers took off from Dubai – and landed at the same airport 13 hours later
Emirates Flight 448 was forced to retrace its steps and return to Dubai about six and a half hours into the flight to New Zealand due to flooding that shut down Auckland Airport. The result? The passengers spent more than half a day in the sky and returned exactly to the place from which they took off
Passengers on the Emirates Airlines flight that took off from Dubai to New Zealand last Friday found themselves landing at the same airport from which they took off more than half a day later.
Illustration (photo: Shutterstock)
The flight, Emirates 448, took off last Friday from Dubai at 10:30 am (local time). When the plane was about halfway to Auckland, a flight of more than 14,000 km, the pilots received a message that they had to turn around and return to the Gulf state. And that’s exactly what happened when the flight landed in Dubai a few minutes after midnight (between Friday and Saturday).
The reason was severe flooding at the airport in Oakland, which caused the closure of the place: “After examining the international terminal, we had to determine that it is not possible to operate international flights today,” said the management of the airport.
Eventually, the airport reopened today (Sunday) and the flight took off from Dubai late Saturday night. She landed in Oakland on Sunday at 11:30 am (2:30 pm Saturday on the US West Coast).
Emirates flight path 448 (photo: FlightRadar24)
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