The operator of Dubai International Airport has forecast record traffic levels this summer and has pledged to add more staff to ensure a smooth operation for passengers.
During the first four months of 2014, Dubai International welcomed 26,116,980 passengers, compared to 24,521,454 passengers during the same period last year, an increase of 6.5 percent, Dubai Airports said in a statement.
“Traffic grew steadily in the first four months of the year and the trend looks set to continue throughout the first half, especially with the summer travel peak just round the corner,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.
“We are again expecting record traffic levels at Dubai International this summer and again we will be deploying additional resources from the kerb to the boarding gates to ease the flow of passengers through our facility,” he added.
Eastern Europe achieved the highest growth rate during April with routes to the region registering a surge of 74.6 percent, driven mainly by flydubai’s new services to Slovakia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Croatia, and Emirates service to Hungary and Transavia airline to Bulgaria.
Other regions that registered high growth rates include North America (17.9 percent) – where Emirates has increased capacity on many destinations and launched a new route to Chicago – and the Indian subcontinent (12.6 percent). Political and economic instability continued to affect traffic on Russian and the CIS routes (-27.6 percent).
In terms of passenger numbers the Indian subcontinent outperformed the rest of the regions (+167,652 passengers), followed by the GCC (+92,069 passengers), and Western Europe (65,175).
In the first four months of the year, total aircraft movements rose 6 percent to 133,493 movements from 125,928 recorded in the same period in 2014.
Year to date cargo totalled 798,771, a contraction of 4.7 percent compared to 837,837 during the first four months in 2014. The decline is caused by the shift of all freighter cargo operations to DWC last year.
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