Dubai International outgrowing itself faster than expected

Rampant passenger growth likely to create congestion problems within three years, according to Emirates Airline chief.

Dubai International Airport faces congestion problems. Courtesy Dubai Airports

Rampant passenger growth through Dubai International Airport (DIA) could create congestion problems within three years, according to the chief of Emirates Airline.

That is because passenger growth of 14 per cent is outpacing earlier projections.

It could also hasten plans to move operations to the new Dubai World Central hub.

“At the moment we have issues. Already DWC (Dubai World Central) is being used, during the runway shutdown period, but if you look at the April figures [for Dubai International] they are up 14 per cent again,” said Tim Clark, the president of Emirates.

“When we did our planning for Dubai International Airport, we worked on growth of 10-11 per cent, but we have been running 14-16 per cent steady for the last two to three years,” he added.

Mr Clark said that DIA would run into congestion problems by 2017-18, and an action plan was needed now.

“We need to push more into the existing DWC and try to expand the passenger terminal building now to take some of the spill from DIA,” said Mr Clark.

Arabian Gulf hubs including Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha are investing billions of dollars in adding capacity to existing airports and building new terminals to cope with double-digit passenger growth as they expand their global networks.

“There is nowhere else that you can go around it,” said Mr Clark on the sidelines of the annual general meeting of the International Air Transport Association [Iata] in Doha. “I suggest getting DWC cracked on as quickly as possible.”

DIA recorded 6.15 million passengers in April, down slightly from March but up 13.7 per cent year-on-year.

Traffic rose 11.9 per cent to 24.5 million passengers during the first four months of this year, up from 21.9 million in the same period last year.

Regionally, the highest growth in passenger numbers was from western Europe in April. That was followed by the Indian subcontinent, driven by growth in passenger traffic from the Pakistani cities of Karachi and Islamabad.

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