Dubai International Airport sees air traffic recovery accelerating in 2022
Dubai International Airport authorities raised their forecasts for 2022. They now foresee a total of 58.3 million passengers by the end of the year -instead of an earlier projection of 57 million passengers.
Dubai International Airport (DXB) has recorded the busiest quarter since 2020 with 13.6m passengers in Q1 2022, indicating that traffic recovery is gaining momentum at the world’s busiest international hub. This is the second consecutive quarter when passenger traffic at DXB has surpassed the 10-million mark.
Key facts and figures
Bolstered by 5.5 million in passenger traffic in March, Dubai’s passenger volumes rose to 13.6m in the first quarter of 2022, up 15.7% compared to 11.8 million passengers in the final quarter of 2021. By comparison, Dubai International recorded 5.7 million passengers in the first quarter of 2021.
India held its longstanding position as DXB’s top destination country with passenger traffic reaching 1.6m, followed by Saudi Arabia (1.1 million), Pakistan (997,000 passengers) and the UK (934,000 passengers). The top three cities in terms of passenger numbers were London with 617,000 passengers, Riyadh with 517,000, Jeddah (337,000), followed closely by Istanbul (324,000 passengers).
“DXB’s performance over the past successive quarters is nothing short of impressive and is a direct outcome of Dubai’s clear strategy and efforts to restore international air connectivity and mobility and lead the global aviation industry out of an unprecedented crisis. While the recovery was initially led by point-to-point traffic, which continues to exceed pre-pandemic levels, the opening of international travel across many key markets has enabled transfer traffic to rebound to 60% of 2019 levels,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.
Dubai international Airport is currently connected to 193 destinations across 92 countries via 73 scheduled international carriers.