A plane is seen beside the new terminal dedicated for A380 aircraft at the concourse in Dubai International Airport (file). Dubai airport boosted passenger numbers 6.1% to 70.5mn in 2014, almost all of them travelling to or from locations outside the UAE, according to a statement yesterday. That took it past Heathrow, which attracted 68.09mn international travellers in 2014.
Bloomberg/Dubai/London
Dubai ended London Heathrow airport’s decades of dominance as the world’s top international air hub last year, buoyed by surging passenger numbers at local carrier Emirates with its record-breaking fleet of wide-body jets.
Dubai International Airport boosted passenger numbers 6.1% to 70.5mn in 2014, almost all of them travelling to or from locations outside the UAE, according to a statement yesterday. That took it past Heathrow, which attracted 68.09mn international travellers in 2014.
Dubai has used its location at a geographical crossroads between Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East to establish itself as a base for inter-continental transfer flights, with Emirates already the world’s No 1 carrier by international traffic. Dubai is building a new hub at Al Maktoum airport which could one day handle 240mn passengers, just as growth at Heathrow is stymied by the constraints of its two runways and political wrangling over whether to add a third.
“We’re planning to overtake ourselves,” Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, which owns both bases, told Bloomberg Television, adding that the bigger challenge may be to carry on growing volumes while providing “the level of service on the ground that passengers on Emirates experience in the air.”
Emirates has transformed Dubai’s role in the aviation industry with the world’s biggest twin-aisle fleet, built around orders for 140 Airbus Group A380 superjumbos.
Still, runway repairs clipped Dubai International’s capacity by about one-quarter for 80 days last summer, limiting expansion to the extent that the airport failed to overtake Heathrow’s overall tally of 73.4mn passengers, including 5.3mn who travelled on domestic flights.
That should be rectified this year, Griffiths said in an interview, with an anticipated passenger total of 79mn eclipsing Europe’s busiest airport by all metrics. The opening of Concourse D later this year will lift Dubai International’s capacity to 90mn people, allowing for further growth before the main expansion of the Al Maktoum site.
Measured by total customers, the two hubs continue to lag behind Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, home base to Delta Air Lines Inc, which recorded 96.2mn travellers in the 12 months through November, based on the latest figures on its website, and Beijing Capital, which lured 86.1mn in 2014. The US and Chinese airports get most passengers from domestic flights.
Heathrow, where British Airways is based, ranked third in the world behind Atlanta and Beijing in 2013, according to Airports Council International, with Dubai seventh after Tokyo Haneda, Chicago O’Hare and Los Angeles International. ACI has yet to publish a full set of data for 2014.
At Dubai’s neighbour Abu Dhabi International airport, home base to Etihad Airways, the third-biggest Gulf carrier, passenger numbers rose 20% last year to 20mn, with a total of 24mn projected for 2015.
