Source: www.ameinfo.com
Fuelled by the rapid growth of Emirates Airline, Dubai International Airport is enjoying a record year so far in 2011 in terms of passenger growth and is on its way to becoming the second busiest airport in the world.
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. More info
