Dubai International eyes 20m passengers in last quarter

October to December is traditionally a busy travel period with the Christmas and New Year’s holiday break and, this year, the Haj pilgrimage and Eid Al Adha have also contributed to the passenger numbers.

“We would be expecting to see some pretty strong numbers during Christmas and New Year,” Jon Conway, divisional senior vice president – UAE operations at dnata, told Gulf News last week.

He also said that dnata, which is owned by the Emirates Group, expects to see 95,000 aircraft take off and land at the airport in the last quarter.

Dubai Airports, meanwhile, declined to comment on the passenger statistics for the period, saying the airports body does not give out the forecast for passenger numbers.

Dubai Airports chief executive, Paul Griffiths, however, recently said Dubai International looks likely to be the busiest airport for international passenger traffic this year after being placed second behind London’s Heathrow in 2013.

Over the 10-day Eid break ending on October 10, Conway said that dnata expected to handle 900,350 passengers across 5,124 flights at the airport, an increase of up to 20 extra flights per week compared to the last week of September.

Dubai International saw a mid-year dip in passenger numbers due to runway repairs that briefly constrained capacity but the airport has bounced back since refurbishment work ended on July 20.

In August, the airport handled more than 6.6 million passengers and, in the first eight months of the year, the airport handled 46,479,919 passengers.

Conway said the airport could handle as many as seven million passengers a month until the year’s end.

dnata predicted that it expects passengers to carry 1.2 bags on average, meaning it is expecting to handle around 24 million items of luggage in the last three months of the year.

By Alexander Cornwell
Published on Gulf News