Dubai air travel hub on track for another record year, underscoring plans for second airport
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, has had 70.1 million passengers already this year and is on track to break its own records again, officials said Wednesday.
The rapid growth of passengers at the airport underscores Dubai as a key hub for East-West travel in global aviation and the need for its $35 billion project to build a massive, five-runway airport at Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central.
“The most exciting thing is having created the world’s largest international airport for the last 11 years,” Paul Griffiths, the CEO of Dubai Airports, told The Associated Press. “We are now going to do it all over again, and I think that doesn’t happen in many people’s lifetimes.”
The city-state’s second airport is now hosting the biennial Dubai Air Show, which already has seen major aircraft orders by both the long-haul carrier Emirates and its lower-cost sister airline FlyDubai.
Those purchases will fuel a major expansion of the routes flown by the two state-owned airlines as they move to Al Maktoum, likely beginning in 2032. Current forecasts predict the airport handling 150 million passengers a year at that point.
On Tuesday, the United Kingdom’s Export Finance, the UK’s export credit agency, issued a $3.5 billion expression of interest letter to back construction at Al Maktoum. That will provide guarantees to British firms to provide equipment and services to the airport project.
“This is going to be a massive effort of international cooperation from so many countries around the world providing all of the advanced systems,” Griffiths said.
“Hopefully we’ll have an airport not just capable of 150 million annual passengers, but one that absolutely exemplifies the best possible technology, the best processes.”
Among the innovations Griffiths hopes to see at the new airport will be an expansion of efforts at Dubai International Airport that allows first- and business-class passengers at Terminal 3 to simply walk through a tunnel to clear immigration.
“What we want is to take as much of that as we possibly can and the idea one biometric signature that’s captured discreetly from cameras that you don’t even see,” he said. “The idea is check-in, baggage handling, immigration, security, will all be handled in a seamless and efficient way and we want to keep the customer moving.”
Dubai International Airport, identified as DXB, is home to the long-haul carrier Emirates, which powers the network of state-owned and state-linked businesses referred to as “Dubai Inc.” The expansion of Al Maktoum, known as DWC, will also fuel a major real estate expansion in this sheikhdom in the United Arab Emirates as well as in its southern reaches. Dubai plans to move its airport operations to DWC, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) away from DXB.
A real-estate boom and the city’s highest-ever tourism numbers have made Dubai a destination as well as a layover. However, the city is now grappling with increasing traffic and costs pressuring both its Emirati citizens and the foreign residents who power its economy.
Last year, DXB had a record 92.3 million passengers, up from 86.9 million passengers in 2023. It had 89.1 million passengers in 2018 — its previous busiest-ever year before the pandemic, while 66 million passengers passed through in 2022.
In its rolling 12-month passenger numbers, DXB had 93.8 million passengers as of the end of September, meaning the airport is well on its way to breaking its record again this year.
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This story has been corrected to show the year-to-date traffic numbers as 70.1 million.