Dubai: Dubai International, the world’s busiest airport for international passengers, is expecting “near record numbers” in the coming weeks, operator Dubai Airports said on Thursday in its latest monthly passenger report.
The airport had 6,721,995 passengers in May, which was a 7.2 per cent increase on the 6,267,640 passengers it handled in the same month a year ago, Dubai Airports said in a statement.
“With near record numbers expected in the coming weeks as a result of the seasonal travel peak, we are looking at solid growth for the first half of 2016,” Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said in the statement.
Dubai International’s busiest month on record is August 2015 when it handled 7.2 million passengers.
The latest monthly figures increase the year-to-date (May) passenger numbers to 34,648,953, up 7 per cent when compared to the first five months of 2015.
India continues to be the airport’s single largest source market with 989,680 passengers using Dubai International to fly in and out of the South Asian country.
Saudi Arabia was the second biggest source market with 594,091 passengers, followed by the United Kingdom with 435,251 passengers and Pakistan with 327,178.
Eastern Europe was the fast growing monthly region in May, up 16.6 per cent, followed by Gulf Arab States, up 16.3 per cent, whilst Asia grew 10 per cent. The most popular cities for passenger traffic were London, Doha and Mumbai.
Aircraft movements – or the number of landings and take-offs, rose 0.6 per cent 34,284 after Dubai Airports introduced a new measurement methodology.
The amount of monthly cargo handled rose 4.7 per cent to 226,916 amid a slowdown in the global freighter market. Freight volumes for the first five months of 2016 were up 3.9 per cent to 1,055,850 tonnes.
