Dubai airport passengers rise 14% in Oct

Passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport rose 14.3 percent in October compared to the same month last year, its second busiest month on record, the airport's operator said on Wednesday.

The airport handled 4.92 million passengers last month, Dubai Airports said in a statement.

"At this rate we expect to exceed our initial forecast of 56.5 million passengers and should end the year at or around 57 million passengers," Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths said.

Year-to-date traffic grew 13.5 percent from a year earlier to 47.49 million passengers.

The GCC recorded the largest increase in total passenger numbers in October, followed by Western Europe, the Indian subcontinent and Asia, the statement added.

Contraction in traffic on Middle Eastern routes continued in October as a result of unrest in certain parts of the region.

The strongest markets in terms of percentage passenger growth were South America driven by new Emirates airline's operations, followed by GCC, Russia and CIS  and Eastern Europe.

Cargo volume totalled 202,619 tonnes in October, an increase of 2.4 percent. Year-to-date volume rose 3.6 percent to 1.88 million tonnes.