Visitors to the Dubai Air Show can see firsthand a scale model of the world’s largest airport being built in Jebel Ali, 40km from Dubai city centre.

The model was a little underwhelming at first sight, but when representatives begin providing details of the airport, you start to appreciate how enormous it will be.

The new hub, which has been renamed Al Maktoum International Airport, will have six parallel runways 4.5km in length. The runways, which will be 800 metres apart, will be able to accommodate four superjumbo A380s taking off or landing at the same time.

The 92 metre high control tower will be the highest in the Middle East and designed in a ‘flower concept.’

The $10 billion airport will be able to handle 120 million passengers and 12 tons of cargo annually. It will also boast hotels, shopping malls (of course), support facilities, and state-of-the-art maintenance facilities.

The airport is scheduled to begin flights of cargo aircraft next year, and will be fully complete in 2012.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 11th, 2007 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Dubai Air Show. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.