Dubai Airport on track to overtake Paris, Hong Kong

Passenger traffic at the world's fourth largest airport grew by 7.3% year-on-year in October to 4.3 million despite a drop in travellers for the Middle East region due to the ongoing political unrest, Dubai Airports said. Through the first ten months of the year passenger numbers totalled 41,855,561, an increase of 7.7% over the corresponding period in 2010.

"New routes, additional frequencies and extra capacity continue to drive passenger traffic growth at the Dubai hub," said Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths. "And we continue to break records. In October, Dubai International achieved yet another milestone by passing the 50 million passenger mark over a 12-month period for the first time."

The strongest markets in terms of percentage passenger growth were Russia & CIS (+33.9%), the GCC (+29.9%) as a result of Saudi Arabian traffic growth, North America (+16.1%) and South America (+15.4%).

"The fact that Dubai Airport has managed to increase passenger figures year on year and in particular during last month shows that people have looked beyond the economic difficulties that the UAE endured a few years ago and are returning in strong numbers to top tourist cities like Dubai," said industry analyst Saj Ahmad.

On pace to leapfrog Hong Kong, Paris airports

According to a recent study by Capa Centre for Aviation, Dubai International Airport will soon emerge as the second busiest airport in the world, leap-frogging Hong Kong and Charles de Gaulle.

The report's analysis of seat capacity found that the airport's winter 2011-12 schedule will push Dubai into the second spot worldwide. "Dubai will hold this advantage through December and into the New Year," the report noted.

If recent rates of growth continue, Dubai could maintain its position as the world's second busiest international airport through 2012 and could overtake Heathrow before 2015 as the London airport has "little spare capacity for expansion", with just two runways already operating at near peak capacity.

Hong Kong's airport, meanwhile, faces runway and airspace capacity constraints, according to the report. "Of its [Dubai airport's] larger rivals, only Paris CDG is relatively unconstrained in terms of capacity, but has been consistently outstripped in terms of growth by DIA," Capa said in the report.

Dubai airport is in the middle of a major expansion, with a new concourse (its third) for terminal 3. A fourth concourse will open by 2018.

Further expansion of Dubai's airport capacity is currently underway with the construction of Dubai World Central International Airport, currently named Al Maktoum, which is planned to be ten times larger than Dubai International. With five parallel runways and three terminals, Al Maktoum will handle 120 million passengers.

Dubai World Central phase-in delayed

However, construction of the new airport has been slowed by the real estate crash that hit the emirate, pushing the timetable for completion of Al Maktoum from early in the next decade to 2030 after the Dubai government dropped the idea of paying for the infrastructure with sales of nearby homes and offices.

Emirates had originally been slated to move from Dubai International to Al Maktoum by 2017, but this is now not expected to happen until 2025 or later.

Ahmad says that the recent growth of Dubai International more than justifies the need for a new airport. "With this sort of growth, it will become more imperative that the Dubai government invests in and quickly develops Al Maktoum International Airport. It's likely we'll see plans for bringing this new airport into full action sooner rather than later," he predicted.