Dubai airport passenger traffic rises 5.7% in April

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Dubai airport passenger traffic rises 5.7% in April

Airport projects a target of receiving 79 million passengers in 2015.

By Issac John (associate Business Editor)

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Published: Fri 19 Jun 2015, 11:04 PM

Last updated: Wed 8 Jul 2015, 3:18 PM

During the first four months of the year, passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport increased 6.5 per cent to 26.12 million people. Photo: AP
During the first four months of the year, passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport increased 6.5 per cent to 26.12 million people. Photo: AP

Dubai: Passenger traffic through Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest airport for international passenger business, rose 5.7 per cent year-on-year in April, the monthly traffic report issued by operator Dubai Airports shows.

The number of passengers climbed to 6.51 million from 6.16 million, partly because of growth in Eastern European traffic as Dubai’s low-cost carrier flydubai expanded services to that region.

In 2014, Dubai International became the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passenger traffic, recording around 70.4m passengers, up 6.1 per cent from 2013.

The airport has projected a target of receiving 79m passengers in 2015.

During the first four months of the year, passenger traffic increased 6.5 per cent to 26.12 million people, Dubai Airports said in a statement.

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

“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 Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

“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 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.

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

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

The $7.8 billion expansion and upgrade project of the airport is making headway and the opening of Concourse D later this year will increase Dubai International’s annual capacity to 90 million passengers. In 2014, Dubai unveiled plans to invest $32 billion in a project that will see the Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central (DWC), the emirate’s second airport, expand to become one of the world’s major aviation hubs.

issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com


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