World's busiest airport: Dubai pips Heathrow

Dubai International Airport has become the busiest airport in the world, overtaking London’s Heathrow Airport, thanks to strong growth by local carriers - Emirates and flydubai.

Dubai Airports received 18.36 million passengers in the first quarter of this year compared to 16.1 million passengers that passed through London’s Heathrow Airport in the same quarter.

In the first three months of the year, passenger traffic at Dubai rose by 11.4 per cent to a record 18.36 million, compared with the 16.486 million passengers it received in the same quarter last year.

Paul Griffiths, Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Airports, expects Dubai Airports to surpass its target of 100 million passengers by 2020, thanks to sustained growth in 2013 and early 2014, Emirates 24l7 reported earlier this month.

“2013 was a year of mapping out and preparing what appears to be a bright and busy future for Dubai Airports. Our traffic projections show that we will have more than 100 million passengers passing through our airports by 2020,” Griffiths said.

Dubai Airports, investing $7.8 billion (Dh28.6 billion) in the expansion of facilities, had aimed to achieve 100 million passengers by 2020.

The airport said in a statement that in March alone, more than 6 million passengers passed through Dubai International, driven by the expanding networks of Emirates airline and flydubai.

This is the third time in four months the airport has recorded monthly traffic of more than 6 million passengers.

Passenger traffic reached 6.285 million in March 2014, up 7.5 per cent from the 5.846 million achieved in the same month last year.

Regionally, the Indian subcontinent again recorded the highest growth in passenger numbers in March (+112,953 passengers), followed by Western Europe (+75,283), the GCC (+60,280) and Asia (+58,851).

Australasia was the fastest-expanding market in terms of percentage growth (+21.9 per cent) as a result of Emirates’ partnership with Qantas, followed by North America (+19.1 per cent) and Asia (+13.9 per cent).

India remained the top destination country (751,390 passengers) during the month, followed by Saudi Arabia (518,555) and the UK (460,529). London emerged as Dubai International’s busiest city destination, ahead of Doha, Jeddah and Riyadh.

Total aircraft movements rose to 32,849 in March, up 3.6 per cent from the 31,713 movements achieved in the same month last year. For the first three months of 2014, total aircraft movements totalled 94,694, 3.9 per cent higher than the 91,130 movements in the first quarter of 2013.

Cargo volumes continued to benefit from improved growth in the world’s developed economies as well as from expanding trade with emerging countries.

Freight volumes reached 228,154 tonnes in March this year, rising 6.7 per cent from the 213,748 tonnes in the same month in 2013. In the first quarter of this year freight volumes climbed 5 per cent to 613,876, up from 584,847 tonnes in the same period last year.

“The growth in passenger and freight traffic supports our continued investment in expanding and improving our facilities at Dubai International. We not only want to increase our capacity to accommodate more passengers but continually refine the service we offer our customers,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

“A key element of this programme is the upgrading and refurbishment of both Dubai International’s runways over 80 days beginning May 1. We have focused our efforts over the past few months to ensure smooth operations during this period and minimising any inconvenience to our passengers while in the long run boosting safety, service and capacity levels at the airport,” he said.
 

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