Dubai Airport traffic soars high

Dubai Airport traffic soars high

"We are on track to meet the annual projected traffic of 56.5 million passengers, which will bring us very close to Dubai International's operational capacity of 60 million passengers per annum"

July 30, 2012 12:28 by Reuters

Passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport jumped 16.0 percent from a year earlier in June, boosted by an increase in passengers from the wider Middle East, operator Dubai Airports said on Monday.

The airport, one of the world’s busiest, handled 4.71 million passengers in June, up from 4.07 million in June 2011. The Gulf, Europe and India again provided much of the rise, but June was the first time in nearly a year that routes elsewhere in the Middle East showed growth; they have been hit by political instability in the region.

Freight passing through Dubai International climbed 6.3 percent from a year earlier in June to 194,992 tonnes, recovering from a 0.1 percent fall in May.

In the first half of this year, passenger numbers rose 13.7 percent to 27.93 million while air cargo volume increased 2.2 percent to 1.09 million tonnes.

“We are on track to meet the annual projected traffic of 56.5 million passengers, which will bring us very close to Dubai International’s operational capacity of 60 million passengers per annum,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports, said in a statement.

“The addition of Concourse 3 during the first quarter of 2013 is well timed to boost our capacity to 75 million…” he added.