Despite the fact that Dubai International maintained its strong growth trend in April 2014 – with more than 6.1m passengers passing through the airport – traffic growth is expected to taper off between May and July this year.

 

April becomes the third month out of four, in 2014, to record traffic of more than 6m passengers. However, with Dubai International reduced to a single runway – as the airport’s two runways are consecutively closed for refurbishment and upgrades – DXB expects traffic growth to slow. Several airlines have moved flights to Al Maktoum International at Dubai World Central (DWC) during the refurbishment period.

 

Passenger numbers rose 13.7% to 6,159,634 in April 2014, up from 5,418,946 passengers recorded in April 2013. During the first four months of 2014, traffic climbed 11.9% to 24,521,454 passengers, up from 21,905,363 in the same period last year.

 

Regionally, Western Europe achieved the highest growth in passenger numbers in April (+172,223 passengers), followed by the Indian subcontinent (+166,241 passengers), where growth was driven in particular by double-digit increases in passenger traffic from Pakistani cities Karachi and Islamabad.

 

The runway upgrade programme is ahead of schedule with work on the southern runway completed today, May 27 – four days ahead of the planned May 31 completion date – and is now back in operation. These additional days will be used for work on the northern runway which is now closed for refurbishment and will remain so until July 20.

 

“While there is still a lot of work to be done, by August we will be well placed to resume the strong growth achieved so far this year with new runways that can accommodate more aircraft while improving efficiency and service to our passengers,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.