DXB ON TARGET TO HANDLE NEARLY 90 MILLION PASSENGERS IN 2017

The world’s busiest international gateway, Dubai International Airport (DXB), continues to grow with a record 22.4 million passengers (+7.4%) passing through its facilities in the first quarter of 2017.

The year-to-date total follows a 3.8% rise in passenger numbers in March, the airport handling 7.5 million passengers compared to 7.2 million during the corresponding month a year ago.

According to operator, Dubai Airports, “the more modest growth rate in March” was due to the timing of the Easter holidays, which fell during March in 2016 and during April in 2017. 

The average number of passengers per flight DXB at  in the first three months of the year was 224, compared to 209 during the corresponding period in 2016, an increase of 6.8%. 

During the first three months of the year, Eastern Europe was the fastest expanding market in terms of percentage growth (33.3%) as the appreciation of the ruble against the US dollar over the past year has increased spending power in Dubai and spiked demand in the Russian market. 


Asia was the next fastest growing market (22.6%) which benefited from additional capacity provided by Emirates and flydubai in markets such as Thailand, China and the Philippines, followed by South America (22.2%). 

Conversely, the impact of travel bans and electronic device restrictions is starting to be felt on North American traffic figures, which were down 4.3% during March of 2017, says Dubai Airports.

Year-to-date traffic to and from North America is up 2.5%.

India remained the top destination country during the first three months of the year with a total of 3,031,866 passengers, followed by the UK (1,618,334 passengers), Saudi Arabia (1,572,963) and Pakistan (1,166,642). 

London topped the list of destination cities during the period under review with 974,950 passengers, followed by Doha (797,729 passengers), Bangkok (633,496) and Mumbai (618,638).



Freight volumes were also on the rise in the first quarter of 2017 with 636,479 tonnes passing through DXB, a 3.5% rise on the same period last year.

This result was positively impacted by an 8.4% boost in cargo volumes in March.

Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports says: “While there are fluctuations in growth market-by-market the overall trend is quite positive as evidenced by the 7.4% increase in passenger numbers during the first quarter. 

“That result keeps us well on track to meet our 2017 forecast of 89 million passengers.”