Small plane crashes near Dubai’s busy airport, killing 4
A small plane involved in upgrading a runway at Dubai
International Airport crashed Thursday night, killing four people and halting
traffic at the world’s busiest airport for international travel for nearly an
hour, AP reported.
Authorities gave no explanation for what caused the crash of
the Diamond DA62 aircraft with a tail number belonging to Flight Calibrations
Service Ltd. of Shoreham, England.
The UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority said the three
British citizens and one South African on the plane were killed.
Early Friday morning, police, paramedics and flight
investigators worked at the crash site, some 8 kilometers (5 miles) southeast
of the airport in Mushrif Park near the city-state’s water reservoirs. Police
told Associated Press journalists they could not visit the crash site, which
was hidden from view by sand dunes.
The airport, home to long-haul carrier Emirates, is the
world’s busiest for international travel. It halted flights from 7:36 p.m.
until 8:22 p.m. over the crash.
Flight Calibrations Service announced in November it signed
a contract to work on the airport’s “navaids,” the beacons around an airport
that show pilots where runways are and how to land on them. Dubai International
Airport later told The Associated Press that the plane “was being used to
calibrate the approach systems” at the airport.
An employee at Flight Calibrations Services, which has two
Diamond DA62s stationed in the United Arab Emirates, declined to comment on the
crash Thursday night.
The work comes as Dubai has shut down its southern runway
for resurfacing and replacing the light and support infrastructure. It closed
on April 16 and officials hope to reopen it on May 30.
Dubai has cut back on some of its scheduled flights and
redirected others to Al Maktoum Airport at Dubai World Central, the city’s
second airport.
Dubai is a major city in the United Arab Emirates, a
federation of seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula.
The city-state’s last major aircraft incident happened on
Aug. 3, 2016. An Emirates Boeing 777-300 coming from Thiruvananthapuram, India,
crash landed, but no lives were lost among its 300 passengers and crew. A
firefighter was killed in a subsequent explosion of Flight EK521.