Fuelled by its home base carrier Emirates, in addition to growth from another near – 100 airlines, Dubai International Airport is full to bursting
In 2024 Dubai looks set to join an exclusive band of airports handling over 100 million passengers a year. Only Atlanta in the USA has regularly achieved this distinction, first exceeding the milestone in 2015.
Dubai was easing towards 100 million when it reached 89 million in 2018 – but Covid put everyone back several years in terms of growth. At its lowest point during the pandemic, Dubai dropped to just 18.2 million travellers in 2020.
Although the final numbers for 2023 were not public when ARGS went to press, propelled by strong growth throughout the first three quarters of the year and in anticipation of an exceptional surge in passengers in the final quarter, Dubai Airports forecast traffic at DXB to reach 86.8 million – surpassing 2019 traffic.
“We’re thrilled but not entirely surprised that DXB is all set to surpass the pre-pandemic milestone well ahead of our initial projections by almost a year,” stated Paul Griffiths, Chief Executive of Dubai Airports.
As Dubai Airports optimistically projects more record-breaking numbers this year, to accommodate growth it is expanding DXB to its physical limits.
With a current capacity of 100 million passengers annually, the deployment of innovative technology, expansion and refurbishment of existing infrastructure and more efficient use of its space and resources is expected to propel the airport’s capacity to 120 million, which is the maximum it can handle, said Griffiths.
It will add more passenger processing capacity, find more space for aircraft stands, boost runway capacity, and try to ease surface access as it tackles every “pinch point” at DXB, explained Griffiths.
DXB will continue as Dubai’s main airport until the government makes the transformative decision to transfer across to the city’s airport of the future – Dubai World Central (DWC) Al Maktoum International Airport (see related story on page 4). The transfer is thought unlikely until early into the next decade.
Built to the south-west of Dubai, when complete DWC will have the capacity to handle 160 million passengers and 12 million tonnes of freight a year. It opened to traffic in 2010 and mainly caters to cargo operators, with a handful of airlines also present.
While DWC is billed as “Dubai’s airport of the future”, for now Dubai Airports is ensuring Emirates can grow unabated at DXB as well as ensuring all other carriers can too. There are 95 carriers operating at the airport, serving 105 countries and 250 unique destinations.
New services in 2023 included an Air Canada link to Vancouver while Virgin Atlantic resumed its London Heathrow operation after a four-year hiatus.
With 8.9 million passengers in the first nine months of 2023, India was DXB’s top country destination in terms of traffic volume, followed by Saudi Arabia with 4.8 million passengers, and the UK (4.4 million passengers).
In 2024 DXB will set new records as this airport achieves mega-hub status.
