The Past, Present and Future of Aviation in Dubai - Airport Business

The past, present and future of Dubai aviation7Capacity expansion plans reflect the dramatic growth that isprojected for the next 15 years. Griffiths: “The big momentwill be when Emirates relocates to Dubai World Central-AlMaktoum International at some point in the next 12-20 years.”strip of compacted sand, an apron,a fire station and a small terminalDramatic growth projectionsDubai International handled 47.2India, the UK, Iran and Germany butwe are also seeing significant increasesenhancement to increasecapacity from 60 million tobuilding. The facility was officiallymillion passengers in 2010 – upin passenger traffic to and from the75 million with the openinginaugurated on 30 September 196015.3% on the 40.9 million recordedUS, China and Australia,” said Griffiths.of Concourse 3 at the end ofand has enjoyed phenomenal growthlast year. “We are seeing expansionArguably the world’s most significant2012. With additional facilitysince then. Throughput was a fewacross the board, not only from ourairport expansion programme is takingenhancements and operationalthousand passengers in the firstusual top flight destinations such asplace in Dubai, with infrastructureefficiencies that will expandyear of operation; the one millionpassenger mark was reached in1974 and five million in 1990, whilethroughput surpassed 10 million in1999. In its 50-year history, DubaiInternational has welcomed morethan 402 million passengers at animpressive average annual growthrate of 15.5%. It has also handledover 3.87 million aircraft movementsat an average annual growth rateof 12.4%. The rapid expansion ofair freight traffic has been equallysignificant with an annual averagegrowth rate of 14.3% since 1977.“The past 50 years have beennothing short of remarkable and thefuture holds even greater promise aswe build our infrastructure to supportthe impressive expansion of Emiratesand flydubai and ascend the ranks ofglobal aviation hubs,” said Griffiths.