Dubai International Airport says the world’s number one airport for international traffic saw its passenger numbers increase by +7.4% in the first three months of 2017 to 22,496,596, compared to 20,948,690 in Q1 2016.

 

According to Dubai Airports, this total also benefited from a 3.8% rise in passenger numbers to 7,511,431 in March, which compared with 7,237,509 in the same month last year.

 

Airport management said: “The more modest growth rate in March was due to the timing of the Easter holiday which fell during March in 2016 and during April in 2017. The number of passenger flights in March grew 1.0% to 34,634 compared to 34,303 last year, while year-to-date flight numbers were up 0.5% to 100,638 compared to 100,116 recorded during the first quarter of 2016.

 

EASTERN EUROPE WAS FASTEST GROWING REGION…

“The average number of passengers per flight in the first three months of the year was 224, compared to 209 during the corresponding period in 2016, an increase of 6.8%.

 

“During the first three months of the year, Eastern Europe was the fastest expanding market in terms of percentage growth (33.3%) as the appreciation of the rouble against the US dollar over the past year has increased spending power in Dubai and spiked demand in the Russian market.

 

“Asia was the next fastest growing market (22.6%) which benefited from additional capacity provided by Emirates and flydubai in markets such as Thailand, China and the Philippines, followed by South America (22.2%).”

 

ELECTRONIC RESTRICTIONS BITE…

Meanwhile, Dubai Airports also reports that ‘the impact of travel bans and electronic device restrictions is starting to be felt on North American traffic figures’, which it reports down by 4.3% during March, although year-to-date traffic to and from North America was up by 2.5%.

 

Dubai Airports further report that India continued to be the top destination country during the first three months of the year with a total of 3,031,866 passengers, followed by the UK (1,618,334 passengers), Saudi Arabia (1,572,963) and Pakistan (1,166,642).

 

Once again, London topped the list of destination cities during the period under review with 974,950 passengers, followed by Doha (797,729 passengers), Bangkok (633,496) and Mumbai (618,638).

 

Commenting on the numbers, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports said: “While there are fluctuations in growth market-by-market, the overall trend is quite positive as evidenced by the 7.4% increase in passenger numbers during the first quarter. That result keeps us well on track to meet our 2017 forecast of 89m passengers.”