Passenger Traffic At Dubai International Airport Triples To 14.2 Million

The world’s busiest international airport handled 14.2 million passengers. Numbers were up about 191 per cent year-on-year during the three-month period to the end of June, maintaining the growth for nine consecutive quarters since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Numbers

The number of passengers using Dubai International Airport (DXB) nearly tripled during the second quarter. This was despite reduced capacity due to the closure of one of its two runways for 45 days for refurbishment work.

The steady surge of growth throughout the second quarter has propelled the world’s busiest hub’s half-yearly traffic to 27.9 million passengers. That is just 1.2 million shy of the airport’s total annual traffic last year!

The hub welcomed a total of 27,884,888 passengers in the first half of the year, up 161.9 per cent compared to H1 2021, said DXB in a press release. The traffic volume represents 67.5 per cent of DXB’s pre-pandemic passenger traffic during the same period in 2019.

“Not only has Dubai Airports been successful in managing the recovery, but customer service quality has been maintained throughout,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports, said.

“We knew at the start of the pandemic that the dramatic downturn would be followed by an equally dramatic upturn, so we were well prepared for it and using all of the business data at our disposal were able to predict the start of the recovery. We worked with our service partners across the airport community to be ready.”

Dubai’s Department of Economy and Tourism (DET) said this month that Dubai hosted 7.12 million international visitors in the first half of 2022, nearly three times the 2.52 million recorded in the same period last year, despite the impact of “unprecedented challenges” and “macroeconomic factors” affecting the global economy and tourism sector.

Dubai Airports now expects 62.4 million passengers in 2022. This will raise its annual traffic forecast from an earlier projection in May of 58.3 million.

Most Travelled Destinations

India remained DXB’s top source country by passenger numbers. Traffic for the first half of the year reached 4 million passengers. This was driven mainly by top city destinations such as Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad.

Saudi Arabia came in second with 2 million passengers followed by the UK with 1.9 million passengers.

The top three cities were London with 1.3 million passengers, Riyadh with 910,000 passengers and Mumbai with 726,000 passengers.

Smart Gates

Smart Gates are an awesome invention that are speeding customers through the immigration process. Customer waiting times have also reduced drastically despite surging traffic.

During the first half, 96 per cent of passengers queued for less than five minutes at departure passport control. The average queue times at security check on departures were less than three minutes for 97 per cent of total passengers.