An Emirates jetliner was attempting to abort its landing at Dubai’s airport shortly before the plane hit the runway and burst into flames Wednesday, causing the worst aircraft loss in the airline’s 30-year history. All passengers and crew escaped from the Boeing Co. 777-300 following the 12:45 p.m. explosion on Flight 521 from Thiruvananthapuram, India. A firefighter was killed trying to extinguish the blaze, Emirates Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said at an evening news conference in Dubai. The trouble with the flight was “operational,” he said, adding he didn’t believe there was any security issue. The pilot might have attempted a so-called go-around -- that is, aborting the landing -- to avoid wind shear, but that hadn’t been verified, Sheikh Ahmed said. The airport had issued a wind-shear warning for all runways before the accident, according to the AviationSafetyNetwork website. “It’s difficult to speculate about what happened in the last few minutes of the flight, but I want to thank the crew for their professionalism and evacuating the plane in a short time,” Sheikh Ahmed said. The pilot and co-pilot had logged more than 7,000 of flying hours each, he said.<br/>Flight 521 had been cleared to land at Dubai, according to a transcript of an air-traffic control recording obtained by LiveATC.net. About a minute and a-half later, the tower gave a new instruction. “Emirates 521 climb straight ahead to 4,000 feet”, a controller said, a command acknowledged by the pilot. The reason for the order wasn’t known. Typically, such instructions are issued after pilots request to abort touchdowns. Television footage and newswire photos showed that the aircraft slid to a halt on its belly, with one of its huge Rolls-Royce engines detached. The jet then quickly became engulfed in smoke and fire, which gutted the length of the fuselage and burned off the roof. The jumbo jet carried 282 passengers and 18 crew members, according to Emirates, the world’s biggest carrier by international traffic. Emergency services sprayed down the plane to put out the fire. Passengers and crew hurried to safety down inflatable slides. Thirteen people were hospitalized with minor injuries, Sheikh Ahmed said. Dubai airport, the world’s third-busiest by passenger numbers, shut down shortly after the crash and reopened at 6:30 p.m. on a restricted basis, giving priority to arriving flights. John Nance, a former commercial and U.S. Air Force pilot who has flown a 777, said videos from the scene indicate that the landing gear may not have been fully deployed when Flight 521 touched down. “This is a situation where it looks very much like the aircraft was landing with gear up. It does appear this was a belly flop,” he said. “Why is a good question, especially if the aircraft was ordered to go around.”<br/>
unaligned
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly pushed back against calls for his ouster by four labor groups, saying the personal attack against him is part of a negotiating ploy. “I’m not going anywhere and neither is Mike Van de Ven,” the company’s COO, Kelly said in a video posted for Southwest employees. “We have important work to do and important issues to address, and we are not distracted by these games.” Southwest’s four largest unions -- representing about 36,000 of its more than 52,000 workers -- this week called for the two executives to step aside, citing flight disruptions caused by the carrier’s aging computer systems, a misguided focus on cost cutting and billions spent on buying back company stock. The coordinated effort is the largest assault on Kelly since he became chief executive in 2004 and comes after three years of record earnings at the Dallas-based airline. “Many of the allegations are simply uninformed or intentionally false,” Kelly said. “Labor negotiations should not be rationalized as a license for bad behavior... The Southwest board of directors, my bosses, fully support our work, our vision, our Southwest family and our Southwest leaders,” Kelly said.<br/>
As the new head of Pakistan International Airlines, Bernd Hildenbrand faces the biggest challenge of his career: getting the state-owned carrier to think about the future instead of living in the past. One of the first things the 61-year-old Deutsche Lufthansa AG veteran did after taking the helm in May was to remove hundreds of old photos from the entrance of PIA’s headquarters glorifying its past. That included one of US former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. “Nice photos, really nice, Kennedy did fly with PIA, wonderful, but it doesn’t help us now,” Hildenbrand, the bespectacled carrier’s acting chief executive officer, said in an interview in his office in Karachi, Pakistan’s commercial capital. “We have to make a leapfrog and go into the future.”<br/>Hildenbrand is attempting to turn around an airline which has been hobbled by frequent labor strife, hasn’t made an annual profit in the past decade and has a higher debt burden than Singapore Airlines Ltd. and Malaysia’s AirAsia X Bhd. combined. It has also lost market share to Gulf carriers. The modernization plan includes introducing flat beds in business class for the first time this month on flights to London. The national flag carrier will also lease aircraft and increase its fleet to 100 by 2025, from a current 38. Emirates has 251 planes, according to its annual report. PIA “projects as a workers’ airline, flying workers from Pakistan to Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Dubai, and doesn’t have a luxury product perception,” said Mark D. Martin, founder of Dubai-based Martin Consulting LLC. “It needs to figure out what it aspires to be and its place in the world.”<br/>
Seeking to attract tech-savvy customers who increasingly book on mobile devices, Icelandair is trying a unique experiment — it now allows customers to book flights on Facebook Messenger. Icelandair is not the first airline to engage with customers on Messenger – KLM earlier this year began letting passengers access boarding passes through the app – but the carrier believes it is the first to allow customers to book on the platform. Icelandair introduced the feature on Tuesday, and though it’s a bit clunky, the carrier is bullish on its future. The airline’s move is part of a growing trend in the travel industry, as brands rush to develop Messenger-compatible programs. Other brands that take Messenger seriously include Hyatt Hotels, Expedia, Kayak and CheapFlights. Some companies only respond to customer queries, while others process bookings. “It’s Icelandair’s strategy to bring bookings and other services to the places where our customers are,” Guðmundur Óskarsson, Icelandair’s director of marketing and business development, said in an email. “We see our customers increasingly using mobile devices, and we believe this channel is a natural progression.” <br/>
Alaska Airlines is adding two more routes from its Seattle hub. The new service to Indianapolis and Wichita furthers the growth strategy Alaska Air has employed there since Delta began a rapid expansion at Seattle, Alaska Air’s main hub. The escalating competition between the partners-turned-rivals has sparked a turf war that’s led to months of record passenger levels at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The airport has reported 31 consecutive monthly records. “We continue to add more destinations from our hometown,” John Kirby, Alaska Airlines’ vice president of capacity planning, says in a statement. “With the addition of nonstop service to Indianapolis and Wichita, Alaska Airlines now offers nonstop service to a total of 89 cities from Seattle – more than twice as many as any other airline.” Alaska Air says it is the only airline to flying nonstop to 35 of its destinations from Seattle. Service to Wichita begins April 13 and will be flown by regional affiliate SkyWest with 76-seat Embraer E175 jets. The Indianapolis route launches May 11 and will be flown with Alaska Airlines' Boeing 737s. The carrier will fly one daily round-trip flight on both routes. <br/>