An Emirates Airbus A380 flying from Dubai landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport (YYZ) on 15 January 2026 only minutes behind schedule, then spent more than three hours parked on the apron because no suitable gate was free. Overnight snowfall of more than 12 centimetres had overwhelmed ground operations at Canada’s busiest airport, leaving the double-decker jet stranded even though its flight from Dubai International Airport (DXB) had gone almost exactly to plan.
According to a report by Simple Flying, passengers on flight EK241 finally reached the gate at 12:15 pm local time, three hours and 18 minutes after touchdown. The delay reflected a structural bottleneck rather than a flight-specific problem: Pearson has only two standard gates built to handle the A380, plus a third reserved strictly for emergencies, and heavy snow left ground crews unable to clear one in time.
Flightradar24 tracking data showed EK241 departed Dubai at 4:08 am local time, 38 minutes behind its scheduled 3:30 am push, then flew the Polar Route across the Arctic and down into Canadian airspace. The aircraft touched down at Pearson at 8:57 am, just seven minutes behind its planned 8:50 am arrival, after a flight lasting 13 hours and 49 minutes.
That near-on-time arrival made the subsequent wait harder for passengers to anticipate. The problems began only once the jet was on the ground, when air traffic controllers and ground crews found there was nowhere for the aircraft to go.
Passengers Wait Three Hours 18 Minutes for a Gate
Toronto Pearson keeps just two gates equipped for A380 operations, with a third suitable only in an emergency. Both standard gates were occupied or inaccessible when EK241 landed, forcing the jet to idle on the apron while crews worked through the overnight snowfall.
Passengers and crew remained onboard throughout, unable to disembark until the aircraft could safely reach a compatible gate. The wait stretched to three hours and 18 minutes, nearly as long as many short-haul flights, tacking a significant delay onto what had already been an ultra-long-haul journey from the Gulf.
Photo: Julian Herzog | Wikimedia Commons
The Aircraft Behind Flight EK241
The jet involved was A6-EEQ, a 12.3-year-old Airbus A380 according to Flightradar24 data. Key details of the aircraft include:
- First flight: 8 October 2013, under the French test registration F-WWAG.
- Delivery to Emirates: 14 February 2014.
- Manufacturer serial number: 141.
- Engines: Four Engine Alliance GP7270 high-bypass turbofans.
- Seating capacity: Configured for 489 passengers across three classes, with 14 First, 76 Business, and 399 Economy seats, per ch-aviation data.
Not Just Emirates: Other Flights Also Hit by the Storm
EK241 was far from the only arrival affected. A Frankfurt-to-Toronto Air Canada service, AC841, operating an Airbus A330-300, also sat stranded on the tarmac for roughly three hours before reaching a gate, according to a passenger account shared on X. Several departing flights faced delays exceeding five hours the same day, with passengers reporting long waits both before pushback and while queuing on de-icing pads.
The disruption also hit Emirates’ return service. Flight EK242 was scheduled to leave Toronto at 1:55 pm but did not push back from the gate until 4:40 pm, a delay of nearly three hours that pushed its Dubai arrival back to 1:27 pm the following day rather than the originally planned 11:40 am. That knock-on effect illustrates how a single ground delay on an ultra-long-haul aircraft can ripple through an entire day’s schedule, since the same airframe typically needs to be turned around quickly to keep pace with Emirates’ onward connections out of Dubai.
All in All
Toronto Pearson recorded more than 23 centimetres of snowfall through the storm, according to CTV News, well above the overnight total that had already grounded EK241. FlightAware data showed more than 340 inbound and outbound flights cancelled at the airport on 15 January, alongside over 500 delays, representing roughly 30 percent of scheduled flights cancelled and 45 percent delayed that day.
Recovery extended into the following day, with more than 140 cancellations and 600 delays recorded as ground crews worked around the clock to restore normal operations. Pearson’s snow-clearing teams focused first on runways and taxiways before turning to gate areas and aircraft parking positions, a sequencing that tends to leave large aircraft waiting longest once they are already on the ground.
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