I think EK having had the luxury of not having to worry about weather events like this in the past put them in the position of having absolutely no idea how to effectively manage a halt on basically their entire operation. I have been flying EK consistently for about 12 years and I have never seen them in such bad shape.
This. If you run an airline in the USA, you have your game plan for what happens if a blizzard or ice storm shuts down a hub for a couple of days. If you hub in Europe, you have plans on how to handle large and simultaneous labor actions. If you hub in an area prone to tropical cyclones like Miami, you have your cyclone plan.
So they didn’t come up with a disaster plan because they felt like they didn’t need one given their hub location.
I hope that going forward, they do learn form this experience and come up with strategies to better handle what could be a huge disruption in the route network.