240mn fliers in Dubai by ’25

Dubai Airports project 240 million passengers will travel through its two airports by 2025. Airport expansion plans are already in place to cater to the growth.

According to Lorne Riley, Director-Corporate Communication, Dubai Airports, “India is our largest market, one of our most important ones globally. India contributes almost 25 per cent of our total traffic. The Indian airlines, as a group, are the fastest growing group at Dubai International (DI) over the past year. The total number of seats has increased by 35 per cent; the total number of flights between the two destinations has increased by 29 per cent while the total number of passenger traffic year-to-date has increased at over 10 per cent in 2016 over 2015.” Out of the total passengers, 47 per cent traffic is for original destination while 53 per cent traffic is connecting at Dubai Airport.

Riley informs that Dubai Airports is projecting that over 240 million passengers will travel through both its airports – Dubai International and Dubai World Centre — by 2025. Currently these airports have capacity for 90 million passengers at Dubai International (DI) and only 5 million at Dubai World Central (DWC). To cater to this traffic, the airport authorities have deployed a three-pronged masterplan to boost capacity to handle this passenger growth.

“Firstly, we are expanding the current passenger terminal building at DWC from 5 million to 26 million which will be in place by the end of 2017. Secondly, we have launched a program called DXB Plus which will take our current capacity at DI from 90 million to 118 million by 2023. This is being done without building anything but strictly through processes like getting passengers through the airport faster, increasing use of technology and more aircrafts landing at the airport than we currently do. Lastly, DWC will be the brand new airport with passenger capacity of 120 million, the project for 2025,” says Riley. He further added that they want to grow the market and business and provide Indians with access to over 240 destinations at DI, an intercontinental hub.