Dubai International Airport on way to becoming second busiest in the world

The Dubai International Airport is enjoying great passenger growth this year, and is on way to becoming the second busiest airport in the world. This expansion is fuelled by the rapid growth of Emirates Airline, the officials said.

The passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport grew by 7.3percent year-on-year in October, touching 4.3million, despite decline in passenger numbers for the Middle East region, due to the current political unrest, the Dubai Airports reported.

During the first ten months of this year, the total passenger numbers recorded at the Dubai International Airport is 41,855,561, marking a 7.7percent growth over the corresponding period in 2010.

According to Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, new routes, additional frequencies, and extra capacity, have helped in boosting passenger traffic at the Dubai hub.

The Dubai International Airport also achieved another milestone in October this year, as it crossed the 50million passenger mark over the 12-month period for the first time.

According the industry analysts, the Dubai Airports the increase in passenger figures year-on-year in Dubai, and in particular last month, indicates that people have begun to look beyond the economic hurdles faced by the UAE few years ago, and are now returning in strong numbers to top tourist destinations like Dubai.

Moreover, according to the latest study by Capa Centre for Aviation, Dubai will soon emerge as the second busiest airport in the world, overtaking Hong Kong and Charles de Gaulle.

In recent rates of growth, Dubai can continue to maintain its position as the world’s second busiest international airport throughout 2012, overtaking Heathrow before 2015, as the Heathrow airport has limited scope for expansion, with just two runways already operating in their peak capacity.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong airport faces runway and airspace constraints. Only Paris CDG is comparatively unconstrained in terms of capacity, although, it has been consistently outstripped in terms of growth by DIA.

The Dubai Airport is in the middle of major expansion, with new concourse allocated for terminal 3. The fourth concourse will open by 2018. Further expansion of airport capacity in Dubai is now underway, with the construction of Dubai World Central International Airport, now named as Al-Maktoum, likely to be ten times larger than Dubai International, with ability to handle 12million passengers.

Posted on 6/12/2011

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