Emirates Has Finally Rescued a Multi-Million-Dollar Boeing 777 After It Was Stranded In Iran For Nearly A Month

Emirates has finally rescued a multi-million-dollar Boeing 777-300 after it was stranded in Iran for nearly a month after the airline flew the plane into Iran just as Israel launched a massive aerial assault on the country in the early hours of June 13.

The 13-year-old aircraft, which is worth $375 million at list price, departed Dubai International Airport bound for Tehran at around 2:27 am. By this time, its believed that Israeli fighter jets were already flying in Iranian airspace as its Operation Rising Lion attack got underway.

The presence of the Israeli jets, as well as their plans to strike key military sites across Iran, however, wasn’t known to anyone at Emirates, and it would be hours later until the Iranian authorities closed down the country’s airspace

By the time Iran grounded all planes in the country, however, Emirates flight EK-977 had already landed at Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, and the crew were preparing to welcome a new set of passengers for their return to Dubai.

That flight never took place. Instead, the pilots and flight attendants had to be rushed to a secure location before being secretly extracted out of Iran, hidden in the back of covert buses that drove hundreds of miles and crossed the Iranian border with Azerbaijan.

From there, the crew were whisked to Baku where a rescue flight had been arranged to repatriate them to Dubai. Thankfully, none of the crew were injured, although the Boeing 777 was simply abandoned in Tehran.

Despite Israeli air strikes on another airport in Tehran, its main international airport was unscathed, and the Boeing 777 was simply left on the ground until Emirates could get pilots safely into Iran without any fear of bombs falling overhead.

That finally occurred on July 5 when public flight tracking website Flight Radar 24 showed the plane moving for the first time since June 13.

The pilots flew the plane on the short two-hour flight to Dubai, where engineers gave the aircraft a thorough once-over before it was given the all-clear to return to regular scheduled operations.

Since then, the plane has already flown to India and the Philippines and, no doubt, it will quickly be racking up the airmiles again in the coming days.

As for Emirates’ operations in Iran, well, they remain suspended until later this month. Emirates says it plans to potentially resume flights to Tehran from July 18, while sister airline Flydubai has already resumed flights to Iran.