Dubai International Airport’s three terminals received a collective 27.9 million pax between January and June this year, making it the busiest HY1 in its history.

 

Dubai International received a total of 4,714,746 passengers in June, an impressive 16% increase, YOY.

 

The year to date traffic reached 27,931,639, up 13.7% from 24,567,818 in the first half of 2011. The average monthly passenger traffic recorded in the first six months of the year stood at 4.65 million compared to 4.09 million during the corresponding period in 2011.

 

Aircraft movements in June totalled 27,428 up 5.1% from 26,101 registered during the same period in 2011. Year to date aircraft movements totalled 170,249, an increase of 6.8% compared to 159,372 recorded during the first half of 2011.

 

TOP DESTINATIONS

In terms of top destinations served by Dubai International during the period under review, the five countries with the greatest passenger volumes were India, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Pakistan and the US.

 

The AGCC (Arab Gulf Co-operation Council) AGCC continued to top the list of regions with the largest increase in total passenger numbers (+180,397 passengers), followed by Western Europe (+124,690), and the Indian subcontinent (+82,543). June was the first time in nearly a year that Middle Eastern routes registered positive growth (+24,785 passengers).

 

South America has remained the strongest market in terms of percentage passenger growth (+140.9%) as a result of new Emirates services to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, followed by Russia and CIS (+54.4%), and Australasia (+26.3%).

 

“Our record first half had some interesting story lines, highlighted by the launch of 12 new routes, the addition of four new airlines and a surge in traffic on routes to Saudi Arabia, USA, Qatar and Australia,”  said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.

 

BOOSTED CUSTOMER SERVICE

“On the service side we boosted our May I Help You staff compliment to 500 people, to provide additional assistance to customers to speed their journey through the terminals. We expanded our transfer areas to ease connections and we launched new high-tech Information Zones and a new downloadable app called myDXB,  both of which provide information on flights and gate numbers as well as way-finding to locate customer-facing services.

 

“We are on track to meet the annual projected traffic of  56.5 million passengers, which will bring us very close to Dubai International’s operational capacity of 60 million passengers per annum,” added Griffiths. “The addition of Concourse 3 during the first quarter of 2013 is well timed to boost our capacity to 75 million while upping the game on our already high levels of customer service.”

 

Dubai International airport recently announced that it is introducing 16 public food outlets and bars to its purpose-built A380 facility, Concourse 3, when it opens, as anticipated, in the first quarter of 2013.

 

The portfolio of outlets ranges from Giraffe – the health-food family restaurant, which will open its first outlet in the Middle East at Dubai International – to well-known brands such as McDonalds, Starbucks and Paul.