Dubai Airport records busiest quarter since 2020

Dubai International Airport has recorded the busiest quarter since 2020, after 13.6 million passengers shuttled through its gateway in the first quarter of 2022.

Dubai International Airport (DXB) official statistics indicate that traffic recovery is gaining momentum at the airports as passenger traffic surpassed the 10 million mark for the second consecutive quarter. DXB announced that 5.5 million visitors bolstered its passenger traffic in March 2022 alone.

According to Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, the outlook for the year remains strong, with annual traffic now projected to reach 58.3 million, exceeding initial forecasts by a significant margin. However, pre-pandemic, a milestone of 86.4 million in yearly traffic was logged by the airport in 2019.

Flight movements during the first quarter totalled 81,966, an increase of 5.8 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2021, during which DXB recorded 77,475 flights.

India remains its top destination for passenger volume reaching 1.6 million, followed by Saudi Arabia at 1.1 million. The two nations are closely followed by Pakistan, where passenger volume stands at 997,000, and the UK, with 934,000 passengers.

The airports’ passenger volumes rose to 13.6 million in the first quarter of 2022, up 15.7 per cent compared to 11.8 million passengers in the final quarter of 2021. By comparison, DXB recorded 5.7 million passengers in the first quarter of 2021.

The Q1 passenger traffic is encouraging for the tourism-driven economy of Dubai, signalling that international travel has picked up considerably since the Covid-19 pandemic caused unprecedented global lockdowns and border closures in 2020.