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- Flights to Dubai were suspended after a drone strike near the airport caused a fire.
- Emirates said in a notice to passengers, "Please do not go to the airport."
- This is the latest development in a challenging two weeks for Dubai's air travel.
Air travel is struggling to return to normal in Dubai.
In a series of X posts early Monday morning, Dubai's media office said there had been a "drone incident in the vicinity of Dubai International Airport (DXB)" that hit a fuel tank, resulting in a fire.
Around 5.10 a.m. local time, the office said the fire had been contained and that no injuries were reported.
However, the incident appeared to have triggered a fresh wave of travel chaos and flight disruptions. Shortly after, DXB said in an X post that all flights were temporarily suspended "as a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of all passengers and staff."
Emirates followed up, saying on X, "All flights to and from Dubai have been temporarily suspended. Please do not go to the airport."
Dubai Airports, which represents both DXB and Dubai's smaller Al Maktoum International Airport, said some flights were being diverted from DXB to Al Maktoum.
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 also posted about the incident on X, saying that flights already in Dubai airspace were heading to Al Maktoum instead of DXB. It also showed flight maps of Emirates flights from the UK and India heading toward Dubai, which were performing U-turns and returning to their origin airports.
This is the latest development in what has been a challenging few weeks for Dubai's air travel. The United Arab Emirates' airspace has been disrupted following the US and Israel's strikes on Iran on February 28, and Iran's subsequent retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies in the Gulf region.
Over the last two weeks, DXB has been hit by drone strikes and falling debris, which has caused thousands of flights in and out of the airport to be canceled.
Emirates has been tentatively resuming partial operations, only to suspend them again. Other airlines, such as British Airways, said it was axing flights to and from Middle Eastern cities like Bahrain, Doha, Dubai, and Tel Aviv until later this month.
