Dubai's flagship carrier Emirates and sister airline flydubai have restored normal operations after heavy rains caused severe flooding across the United Arab Emirates.
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Emirates cancelled almost 400 flights and delayed many more as a result of a record storm that hit the desert city of Dubai on Tuesday, the airline's president, Tim Clark, said in a statement on Saturday.
Due to the impact of the storm, the airline suspended check-in for passengers departing from Dubai and halted its transit operations through Dubai International Airport, a major global travel hub, leaving thousands of travellers stranded.
As of Friday morning, 1478 flights to and from Dubai had been cancelled since Tuesday, approximately 30 per cent of all flights, according to aircraft flight tracking website FlightRadar24.
The airport had struggled to return to normal operations after the storm flooded taxiways, forcing flight diversions, delays and cancellations.
Flydubai also returned to its full flight schedule from the airport's Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 on Saturday following the weather-related disruption, a spokesperson for the airline said.
Clark said Emirates had provided 12,000 hotel rooms and 250,000 meal vouchers to customers who were affected.
He said it would take days to clear the backlog of re-booked passengers.
In the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, state carrier Etihad said flight operations had returned to normal.
The UAE has suffered the impact of the flooding for days, with roads between the city and Abu Dhabi still partially underwater as of Saturday.
Some supermarkets and restaurants in Abu Dhabi faced product shortages, unable to receive deliveries from Dubai.
Researchers have linked extreme weather events such as Tuesday's storm to climate change and anticipate that global warming will lead to higher temperatures, increased humidity and a greater risk of flooding in parts of the Gulf region.
A lack of drainage infrastructure to cope with heavy rains in countries such as the UAE can also put them at particular risk of flooding.
The storm first hit Oman at the weekend, killing at least 20 people, before pounding the UAE on Tuesday with its heaviest rains in 75 years of records.
At least four people were killed in subsequent flooding in the UAE.
Two Philippine women and one man died in their vehicles in floodwaters, the government in Manila said, while an Emirati man in his 70s died when his vehicle was swept away by floods in the northern Ras Al Khaimah emirate.
Australian Associated Press
