Dubai Airports announced yesterday that Dubai International Airport broke all passenger records last August, handling 7.2m passengers during the month– a 9.5% increase on the same month last year.

 

This is the highest total ever recorded in a single month in the airport’s 22-year history, while year-to-date traffic totalled 52,264,223 – an equally impressive rise of 12.4% on the first eight months of last year.

 

Airport management said the increase was due to the seasonal rush of travellers, including inbound traffic of residents returning for the start of the academic year, plus the increase in flight frequencies and launch of new services by Emirates, flydubai and other airlines.

 

In terms of regions, the Indian subcontinent topped the rest, registering the highest growth in passenger numbers of some 143,970 passengers, followed by Western European with 129,950 and the GCC with 111,637.

 

 

In percentage growth terms, Eastern Europe was the fastest-expanding market with plus 67.9%, followed by North America with 24.8%.

 

These markets benefited from the increase in Emirates’ capacity with bigger aircraft to Chicago, Dallas, Houston, and San Francisco, and the added daily flights to both New York and Seattle, Russia and the CIS (+12.9%), and the Middle East (+11.6%), spurred mainly by launch of services to new destinations and additional capacities on Emirates and flydubai among other carriers.

 

India continues to be the top destination country with 855,550 passengers and the financial capital Mumbai was the busiest destination, followed by the UK (543,213 passengers) and Saudi Arabia (480,051 passengers). London was the top destination city, followed closely by Kuwait and Doha.

 

Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports said: “We are very pleased with the traffic so far this year, particularly the record-breaking numbers in August. As we mark the 55th anniversary of DXB this week we cannot help but look back at our humble beginnings, and how, thanks to the vision of the leadership, a tiny airport rose rapidly to become the world’s number one hub for international passengers.”