DUBAI Stranded transit passengers in Dubai are beginning to find their way back to the skies as flight bans ease in Europe and concerns about the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud start to break up.<\/p>\n
According to Tim Clarke, the President of the biggest airline in the region, Emirates, it\u2019s happening just in the time. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
He told the press here today there would be an economic \u201cimplosion\u201d in the aviation industry if the disruption were to go on much longer.\u00a0 Clarke estimated his carrier alone has lost $50 million since the start of the flight ban lat week.<\/p>\n
Dubai airport officials were thrilled today to see a flight arrive from Amsterdam.\u00a0\u00a0 Passenger volumes have been down as much as a third at this key regional air hub.<\/p>\n
Still with outright flight bans or limitations still in place in the UK and elsewhere, air traffic volume in Europe was only at about 50% of normal levels Tuesday.\u00a0\u00a0 At least 8 more Emirates flights to the UK were cancelled.<\/p>\n
Emirates like other airlines are operating tactically, heading to major airports that are ramping up operations like Paris\u2019 Charles de Gaulle and avoiding the still-closed London Heathrow.<\/p>\n
This gradual \u201clift-off\u201d of air travel means many of those 8,000 transit passengers remain stuck in Dubai.\u00a0 Hoteliers here aren\u2019t complaining. They\u2019ve seen occupancy levels soar accommodating the grounded travelers.<\/p>\n
One hotel operator IS upset, though.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The owners of the Armani hotel, the first of a chain planned by the Italian designer Girogio Armani, had to postpone its grand opening at the Burjh Khalifa tower planned for this week until later this month due to lack of glitterati.<\/p>\n
One star who was happy to make his way OUT of Dubai, though, was Tom Jones.\u00a0\u00a0 He performed here over the weekend and the \u201cWhat\u2019s New Pussycat\u201d crooner managed to sneak away to an undisclosed destination.<\/p>\n
As for a Fox News team, also grounded for the last few days in Dubai, they managed to secure air travel which should see them back at their London home base by mid-week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We should, add, however, as they do in this part of the world, \u201cInshallah,\u201d or, \u201cGod-willing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DUBAI Stranded transit passengers in Dubai are beginning to find their way back to the skies as flight bans ease in Europe and concerns about the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud start to break up. According to Tim Clarke, the President of the biggest airline in the region, Emirates, it\u2019s happening just in the time. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4512,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-535317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4512"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}