Dubai’s airport celebrated 2015 by overtaking London’s Heathrow as the busiest in the world for international traffic.
It was a journey that began in 1938, when the emirate was used as a stopping point for flying boats operating from England to what is now Pakistan in British India.
For many years the main landing strip for commercial traffic was at the British air force base in Sharjah, but in 1959, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed ordered work to begin on a new airport.
It opened in 1960, with a sand landing strip, but a proper runway was ready by 1963, along with the radar and infrastructure for long-haul jets.
This view of the control tower was taken in 1971, when an approach and runway lighting system came into operation.
By then the airline was serving nearly a dozen airlines and offered 20 destinations.
Forty-four years later, Dubai has a capacity of 70 million passengers, flying to 270 cities across the world.
* James Langton
