Emotional reunion as Kenyan man who missed ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight, arrives home

Ahmed Khalid from Mombasa is one lucky man.

The 29-year-old who works in Dubai had booked a flight on Ethiopian Airlines that would leave at 4:30am and arrive in Addis Ababa at around 7am.

As fate would have it, however, the ET601 flight from Dubai was delayed and left later than expected.

By the time they reached Bole International airport in Addis Ababa, Khalid was 50 minutes late for his connecting flight but still hoped he could make it.

This was not to be.

“I was running to catch the first flight to Nairobi ET 302 but it had already left,” he said during an interview on NTV.

Khalid’s father on the other hand, had arrived at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport much earlier.

His son had told him to be there early enough as he would be catching the first flight to Nairobi.

He waited at the airport and when it was time to go to the arrivals section, he decided to ask someone about the scheduled flight:

“I just asked a taxi driver there he asked me which flight I was receiving him from I told him Ethiopia, and he told me ‘Oh my God’ Ethiopia has crashed.”

In disbelief, he decided to call his wife who had remained in Mombasa with their daughter in law.

“My husband got worried and he didn’t know what to do whether to call Ahmed or not,” she said.

Shortly after that, another call came through and when he answered it, heard Khalid’s voice on the other end.

Khalid told him he had missed his flight and would arrive in Nairobi at around 1:30pm.

“I was to board  that flight but I missed it, I don’t know maybe God still loves me but Allah is the protector,” Khalid said.

It was a sigh of relief for his mother, wife and daughter, when he finally arrived at their home in Mombasa several hours later.