‘Patience and understanding’ has been asked by Emirates CEO Tim Clark to ask the airline’s passengers for their suffering due to the flooding in the United Arab Emirates and the chaos at Dubai airport last week.

Hundreds of flights were grounded and thousands of customers were stranded due to the rainfall.

‘I would like to express our sincere apologies to every customer whose travel plans were disrupted during this period,’ Tim Clark wrote in a letter published on the airline’s website.

‘We know our response was not perfect. We recognise and understand our customers’ frustration due to the congestion, lack of information and confusion at the terminals. We acknowledge that long queues and waiting times were unacceptable,’ he added.

The airline changed dozens of flights on Tuesday as the storm raged and ‘over the next three days we had to cancel nearly 400 flights and delay many more as operations continued to face problems due to staff and supply shortages,’ he said.

Clark said his staff did everything they could to deal with the unprecedented situation and that the airline ‘sent over 100 volunteer employees to take care of customers’ by prioritising medical cases, the elderly and other vulnerable travelers.

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The Emirates chief revealed that over 12,000 hotel rooms were made available for customers in Dubai, as well as 250,000 meal vouchers. The airline still has more than 30,000 pieces of luggage to return to customers.

“We have set up a task force to sort, identify and deliver to their owners about 30,000 pieces of luggage left,’ Clark said. ‘It will take a few more days,’ he said, asking customers for ‘patience and understanding.’

As of Saturday, normal Emirates flight schedules have been restored.