**All 300 aboard Emirates Flight EK521 survived a runway crash and fire in Dubai. One firefighter did not.**<\/p>\n
On the afternoon of Aug. 3, 2016, Emirates Flight EK521 completed a routine crossing from Thiruvananthapuram, India, and lined up for Dubai International Airport. The Boeing 777-300, registration A6-EMW, carried 282 passengers and 18 crew. Most of those on board were Indian nationals. Others came from the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Saudi Arabia and more than a dozen other countries. The scheduled arrival was 12:50 p.m. local time. What unfolded minutes earlier would destroy the aircraft, close the world\u2019s busiest international hub for hours, and leave a single death on the ground.<\/p>\n
The airplane touched down long on Runway 12L. Wind conditions had shifted on final approach. The crew attempted a go-around. For almost the entire attempt, both engines remained at idle. The jet rose only briefly, then settled back onto the runway with its landing gear in transit. It slid, came to rest, and caught fire. Cabin crew opened usable exits and deployed slides. Passengers left bags behind and went down the chutes into heat and smoke. Within minutes, everyone who had been in the cabin was off the airplane. That fact is the reason the accident is remembered as a survival story rather than a mass-casualty disaster.<\/p>\n
It was not cost-free. Airport rescue and firefighting units reached the wreck in about a minute and began applying foam. Roughly nine minutes and 40 seconds after the aircraft stopped, residual fuel in the center tank ignited. A large section of the right wing\u2019s upper skin blew off and struck a firefighter working a hose line. He was killed. Officials identified him as Jasim Issa Mohammed Hassan, also reported as Jassim Eissa al-Baloushi, a civil-defense firefighter from Ras Al Khaimah. Other firefighters were injured, some by heat. Occupants of the aircraft suffered injuries as well: investigators later counted 32 injured among passengers and crew, including four serious injuries, most of them among cabin staff. Early airline briefings spoke of a smaller number of hospital cases; the final investigation produced the fuller tally.<\/p>\n
The General Civil Aviation Authority of the United Arab Emirates led the inquiry, with participation from Emirates, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. Recorders were recovered the next day. A preliminary report in September 2016 described a long landing and a go-around that ended with the airplane striking the runway as the gear retracted. The final report, released on Feb. 6, 2020, stated the causes in operational terms.<\/p>\n
During the attempted go-around, except for the last three seconds before impact, both thrust levers stayed at idle. The airplane did not have the energy to fly. The crew had pressed the takeoff\/go-around switch but did not recognize that the autothrottle had not advanced the levers. They did not complete the thrust-verification steps in the go-around procedure and did not scan primary flight instruments effectively in those seconds. Contributing factors included an early flare, a wind shift that increased airspeed, a tailwind landing that carried the touchdown beyond the intended zone, and a failure by air traffic control to pass wind-shear reports from preceding flights. Investigators also noted that simulator training had not prepared the crew well for a go-around initiated so close to the runway, and that reliance on automation shaped their response.<\/p>\n
Those findings are more precise than the first-day explanations that circulated online. Passengers recalled a warning that some took to be about landing gear. Weather, including wind shear, was part of the environment. The official record places the loss of the airplane on an unsuccessful go-around flown with engines at idle, not on a confirmed gear collapse as the initiating event.<\/p>\n
Dubai International Airport halted operations while emergency crews worked. Flights diverted. Images of the burning 777 moved around the world within hours. Emirates confirmed that all passengers and crew were accounted for and offered condolences to the firefighter\u2019s family. Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum praised the cabin crew, who were among the last to leave, and the airport teams. The aircraft, delivered in 2003 and written off in the fire, became Emirates\u2019 only hull loss.<\/p>\n
Survivor accounts from that afternoon are consistent on a few points: the cabin filled with smoke quickly; instructions from crew cut through the noise; the slides were the difference between a crowded fuselage and open tarmac. Some described holding children on the way down. Others described turning back to look at a jet they had boarded a few hours earlier, now burning. Those details belong in the record because they explain why evacuation training is treated as operational, not ceremonial. A 777 on fire with 300 people still seated would have been a different story.<\/p>\n
The firefight itself drew later criticism in the same final report. Investigators described uncoordinated use of water, vehicle placement that limited the fire commander\u2019s view, and an explosion that occurred after two appliances had exhausted their water. The death on the ground was not inevitable in the abstract; it was the product of a specific blast after the cabin had already been emptied. That distinction matters. The people who walked away did so because slides worked and crew kept the flow moving. The man who died did so because the wreck remained dangerous after the last passenger was out.<\/p>\n
Aviation accidents are rare relative to the volume of traffic through Dubai. When they happen, they are studied for procedures that can be changed: go-around training from low altitude, verification of thrust when automation does not behave as expected, wind-shear reporting to following aircraft, and fireground tactics around a fueled widebody. Emirates said after the final report that it had already adjusted operating procedures based on its internal review. Regulators issued recommendations to the airline, the airport, and manufacturers.<\/p>\n
A decade on, EK521 sits in the industry\u2019s case files as an example of two truths that travel together. Commercial jets are built and crewed so that a runway impact and a post-crash fire can still end with everyone who was on board alive. And the work of making that outcome possible does not stop when the slides are empty. One firefighter paid for the minutes that followed. The 300 people who left the airplane did not. That is the event as the official record describes it\u2014not a miracle detached from procedure, and not a routine landing that simply \u201cwent wrong,\u201d but a failed go-around, a successful evacuation, and a fatal explosion on the fireground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
**All 300 aboard Emirates Flight EK521 survived a runway crash and fire in Dubai. One firefighter did not.** On the afternoon of Aug. 3, 2016, Emirates Flight EK521 completed a … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":557,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kpdaily.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}