The Dubai International Airport now holds rank 1 as the world’s busiest airport for international passengers with annual traffic for 2017 reaching 88.2 million passengers.
The number of flight movements during 2017 totaled 409,493. The average number of passenger per flight grew due to DXB’s position as the world’s largest hub for wide body aircraft. It also welcomed six new scheduled passenger airlines including SalamAir, Badr Airlines, and Air Moldova. Emirates and flydubai added 3 and 10 new passenger destinations and increased its frequency on 31 and 22 routes respectively.
It was indeed a very successful year for DXB because they not only achieved a huge growth in traffic which solidified their position as the world’s number one international airport but they also did delight their customers with a range of new and exciting services and innovative products. It also has the world’s fastest free airport Wi-Fi, followed by free streaming movies for passengers through partnership with ICFlix.
India is dominating its run as the single largest destination country for DXB with 12,060,435 passengers in 2017. UK acquired the second spot with 6,466,404 passengers by overtaking Saudi Arabia which has a record of 6,364,598 passengers.
Journeys are made smoother by reducing waiting times, by deploying cutting edge technology to track and managing queues, as well as enabling the use of Emirates ID at smart gates for UAE residents.
The passenger traffic is expected to reach 90.3 million in 2018; the focus in the new year will be on the DXB Plus programme which is aimed to expand the airport’s annual capacity to 118 million passengers through process improvements and use of new technology.
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