Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths is predicting a rapid return to full capacity now that normal air traffic operations have resumed.
Mr Griffiths said the hub had facilitated the travel of six million people during the Iran crisis “despite having more than 100 missile alarms to deal with … about three a day”.
Precautionary restrictions had been in place since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28, but civil aviation authorities opened the airspace and lifted restrictions on the number of planes from Saturday.
Speaking to The National as Dubai Airports released its first-quarter report, Mr Griffiths said it was “really good news as we're now able to operate at 100 per cent capacity”.
He added: “Emirates [airline] and flydubai will lead the recovery, and we're going to see some very strong passenger growth numbers over the next few months.
“Now we're able to operate at our full declared capacity of 1,396 movements, whereas for most of April we were operating something like 541 movements, which was only 38 per cent of our normal operational throughput at DXB.”
Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest international airport, reported a 66 per cent drop in passenger numbers in March as the war disrupted air traffic across the Middle East.
The figures dragged down the airport’s first-quarter passenger traffic to 2.5 million, down 21 per cent from the same period last year.
Mr Griffiths said the focus on safe operations would ensure capacity was restored.
“So far we've got something like 51 different airlines operating and in normal circumstances it's over 100,” he said. “We've got a number of destinations, which is now up to 192 when it's normally 290, and we're expecting a lot of foreign airlines to be coming back to Dubai.
“Now we're waiting for travel restrictions to be lifted from various countries and for those airlines to be able to get the necessary insurances to be able to resume operations.
“As Emirates and flydubai don't have those restrictions, they will be mounting flights very, very quickly to fill the void provided by some of the absence of the other airlines.”
Looking for growth
Looking to the future, Mr Griffiths said it was hard to forecast at this stage, but he believes Dubai is in a “recovery phase much further ahead than any of the competing hubs”.
“We're not going to get to our 100 million passengers that we were hoping for this year, but I'm hoping we'll get there next year,” he said.
“We will monitor the recovery closely, with the transfer markets, in other words, those markets that depend on this region for a point of connection between two flights, will recover fairly quickly.
“The world depends on something like 100 million people connecting over this region, and the airports in the Gulf get about 70 per cent of the total transfer capacity being offered.
“We believe that we are in a recovery phase much further ahead than any of the competing hubs, and we will probably grow our market share over the next few months.
“That will drive the recovery, particularly through the summer when traditionally the origin and destination markets between Dubai and the rest of the world aren't as strong as the transfer market.
“What I think will be the really strong growth quarter will be Q3 when we start to see huge surges of visitors coming back to Dubai.”
India continued to be the airport’s largest market with 2.5 million guests, followed by Saudi Arabia, the UK and Pakistan. London remained the airport's busiest destination city with 752,000 travellers, followed by Mumbai and Jeddah.
Airlines rebuild
Airlines have begun releasing details of a staggered return to operations from next month.
British Airways will operate once-daily flights to Dubai from July 1, with a second daily service to resume on October 16. The airline said the situation was under constant review, with changes made to the flying schedule “due to the continuing situation in the Middle East.”
British Airways will also operate flights to Doha once daily, restarting on July 1. The airline will call on Riyadh once daily from May 20. Flights to Bahrain and Amman are paused until the end of the summer and will resume on October 25.
“Following a review of our flying programme, we have taken the difficult decision to permanently suspend services to Jeddah from April 24,” a British Airways representative said.
KLM said its flights to Dubai were cancelled up to and including June 22. “The situation regarding flights to Riyadh and Dammam remains unchanged; these flights have been cancelled up to and including June 14,” a spokeswoman said.
The Iran war has driven up the cost of aviation fuel, creating a ripple effect across the industry, with KLM announcing the cancellation of 150 flights on its European routes.
With reporting from Bloomberg
