Dubai airport sees over 6.5m passengers in April

Dubai International airport recorded a 5.7 per cent year-on-year increase in passenger traffic in April 2015 with visitor numbers reaching over 6.5m, operator Dubai Airports revealed on Thursday.

This is the third time in the first four months that monthly traffic at the hub has surpassed the 6.5m mark, a statement said.

Eastern Europe saw the highest growth rate during April with routes to the region up 74.6 per cent, mainly due to flydubai’s new services to Slovakia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Croatia, Emirates service to Hungary and Transavia airline to Bulgaria.

Other regions that registered strong growth include North America (17.9 per cent) – where Emirates has increased capacity on many destinations and launched a new route to Chicago – and the Indian subcontinent (12.6 per cent).

Political and economic instability continued to affect traffic on Russian and the CIS routes, with numbers down 27.6 per cent, the report said.

In terms of passenger numbers the Indian subcontinent topped the list with over 167,600 passengers, followed by the GCC and Western Europe.

Aircraft movements during the month also rose 6.5 per cent to reach 33,279, up from 31,234 movements recorded in April last year.

The average number of passengers per movement was 206.2, down by 3.3 per cent from April 2014, while the year-to-date (April) average was 206.4 passengers, down by 2 per cent from the same period last year.

Overall, during the first four months of 2014, Dubai International welcomed 26,116,980 passengers, up 6.5 per cent compared to the same period last year. Total aircraft movements during the period rose 6 per cent to 133,493.

“Traffic grew steadily in the first four months of the year and the trend looks set to continue throughout the first half, especially with the summer travel peak just round the corner,” said CEO of Dubai Airports Paul Griffiths.

“We are again expecting record traffic levels at Dubai International this summer and again we will be deploying additional resources from the kerb to the boarding gates to ease the flow of passengers through our facility,” he added.

In terms of freight, Dubai International saw volumes reach 204,075 in April, down 3.6 per cent year-on-year.

Year to date cargo totalled 798,771, also down 4.7 per cent compared to the same period last year.

The decline was caused by the shift of all freighter cargo operations to Dubai World Central last year, the report said.

Dubai International became the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passenger traffic last year recording around 70.4m passengers, up 6.1 per cent from 2013.

The airport has projected a target of receiving 79m passengers this year.