Dubai airport posts 6.9% rise in February passenger traffic

Passenger traffic at Dubai International airport reached over 6.38 million in February, up 6.9 per cent year-on-year.

In total, the airport welcomed over 13.7 million passengers during the first two months of the year, an increase of 6.5 per cent from the first two months of 2015, operator Dubai Airports said in a statement.

India remained the top destination country in February with a total of 885,298 passengers, followed by Saudi Arabia (485,570 passengers) and the United Kingdom (460,279 passengers).

London topped the list of destination cities, followed by Doha and Mumbai.

Meanwhile Eastern Europe emerged as the fastest expanding market in terms of percentage growth (14.6 per cent), followed by the Indian subcontinent (11.5 per cent), North America (10.7 per cent) and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (7.9 per cent).

Aircraft movements at the airport also grew 6.3 per cent year-on-year to reach 32,975 during February.

Dubai Airports chief executive officer Paul Griffiths said: “This steady growth in passenger numbers has coincided with the opening of Concourse D in February, which increased DXB’s capacity to 90 million passengers a year.

“Not only are we able to accommodate the rising passenger numbers, we have also boosted our service levels considerably.”

Dubai emerged as the world’s third busiest airport for passenger traffic in 2015, up three spots since 2014, according to the latest rankings released by the Airport Council International last week.

Read: Dubai ranks high among world’s top 10 busiest airports in 2015

Dubai International also maintained its ranking as the world’s busiest for international passenger traffic last year.

The airport posted traffic growth of 10.7 per cent, welcoming over 78 million passengers in 2015.

“This month, we were deemed the third busiest airport in the world by ACI, moving up three places from last year’s ranking,” said Griffiths.

“Considering that we do not have domestic traffic, this is an important milestone. The continued rise in traffic at DXB is underpinned by our heavy investment in the infrastructure needed to facilitate growth for the 100 airlines that operate at our airport.”

The emirate is currently undertaking a massive expansion programme of both its airports – Dubai International and Al Maktoum – to accommodate increasing demand.

The renovated Al Maktoum International Airport will be able to handle up to 26.5 million passengers per year by 2025 with eventual annual capacity reaching 220 million passengers.

Overall, the emirate looks set to surpass all the international airports with plans to attract 86 million passengers per year in 2016, 126 million by 2020 and around 200 million passengers annually by 2030.