TRAVELOGUES SERIES
Our experience facing the aftermath of the April 16, 2024 flood.
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“Sorry sir, our flight was delayed due to bad weather and floods in Dubai,” the person at the KLIA check-in counter mentioned to me when I asked her why there was a flight delay to Dubai. This was April 17, 2024, and the flood was April 16, 2024.
I didn’t know the scale of the disaster until I watched several videos on TikTok and other social media channels.
However, I also did not realize its impact on my travel to Dubai for an invited conference and the signing of an MOU until I reached the Dubai International Airport.
I traveled with several other delegates from Cybersecurity Malaysia, Aswant, Malaysia Airports Holdings, and a journalist from Bernama.
We were waiting for our baggage at Belt 4 when someone mentioned there would be a bag delay for another 4 to 5 hours. We decided to check in to the hotel and will get the baggage after breakfast tomorrow morning.
Luckily, the event was in the afternoon, and we thought we might get appropriately dressed for the conference if we had gotten our baggage that morning.
Oh boy! We are wrong! The following experience made us think that the Dubai Airport, even with its sophisticated system, will be chaotic and can’t handle the disastrous impact of the flood aftermath.
The “Lost and Found” baggage services queue was chaotic, with passengers shouting at the officers at the counter. Everyone seems tired, angry, and frustrated with the delays in getting their baggage because many have their connecting flights canceled or further delayed.
We managed to get feedback from the officer that our bags were already available, but we needed to come back 40 minutes later to pick them up. However, that 40 minutes became 1 hour and beyond, and we still couldn’t get any definite answer from the officer when we would get our bags out.
It’s no use for us to be at the Airport without a definite answer, so we decided to return later at night.
We have been wearing the same attire since we arrived and had to wear it during our conference. It’s weird when everyone else is wearing business attire, and we have to be in our informal attire. Fortunately, the host and audience know our situation, so we feel at ease.
We returned to the airport at almost midnight and found a long queue. When we mentioned to them that we were not trying to check the baggage status but just wanted to pick up the bags, security asked us to queue again!
What the heck! Why should we queue again, even if we are unsure whether they have our bags ready to be collected?
Then it strikes us: how could they identify our bags out of thousands of bags left unattended? In fact, they don’t have enough ground crews to help us identify and find the bags!
Then we heard someone get their bags by entering the baggage area. Since we had enquired and had our boarding pass written where the bags would be left, we entered the baggage area where passengers exited. But we needed to show the security our boarding passes and passports to enter that area.
Within several minutes, we managed to identify our bags!
Once in a while, we heard people clapping and cheering — probably everyone managed to get their bags back.
This made us wonder why the airport officials couldn’t give very clear instructions on where and how to get our baggage in the first place. Many passengers get frustrated because they lack communication.
When the baggage system was disrupted due to floods, Dubai Airport could not cope with the impact. They should have given clear instructions to the passengers and changed their security policy so that passengers could collect their baggage by themselves. I think they did this very late, and many didn’t know the instructions, making all passengers queue again.
By 1 a.m., we had our bags and returned to our hotel, reaching 2 a.m. feeling very tired but satisfied because we would be flying back to Kuala Lumpur at 9.15 pm.
Luckily, the return flight was not delayed, and we returned home safely.
More than 1,244 flights have been canceled, and many more have been delayed.
Dubai City has been cleared of flood waters, but the impact will be felt for many days and weeks.
Dubai International Airport needs to improve its communication. Disgruntled passengers have raised this as one of the main issues — and so do we.
Dr. Mazlan Abbas 