Dubai International prepares for 90m passengers a year

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Dubai International Airport sharply increased its projected capacity growth to 90 million passengers at the end of the next decade from its earlier target of 75 million.

The revision follows delays at the emirate’s second airport, the US$8.2 billion (Dh30.11bn) Al Maktoum International Airport in Jebel Ali, which is scheduled to open for business next year.

"There is a great deal more capacity to come out of Dubai International Airport," said Paul Griffiths, the chief executive of Dubai Airports.

The delay at Al Maktoum means Dubai Airports, which will run both facilities, will seek to maximise Dubai International’s capacity beyond the work already being done on Concourse Three.

The capacity gains are expected to come from new systems and processes at the airport, rather than additional infrastructure.

"When you look at the logic of infrastructure expansion, it is far more cost effective to look in detail at the process than it always is to build things," Mr Griffiths said.

Dubai International Airport could handle 90 million travellers a year through improvements in runway movements, passenger flow, additional manpower, as well as new aircraft stands and contact gates, he said.

Other options included an upgrade of its three terminals, and the introduction of a fourth, he added.

Al Maktoum has been designed to become the world’s largest airport and the eventual home of Dubai’s fast-growing aviation industry, led by Emirates Airline.

Although limited services are set to open next year for phase one, with capacity of 5 million passengers a year, the completion date of the new airport – with a capacity of up to 160 million travellers a year and five runways – has been pushed back to the 2020s, one of many airport projects suffering from delays due to the global credit crisis.

This is putting more pressure on Dubai International to handle the growth of the emirate’s aviation sector over the next decade.

"It may take longer than the original programme to be able to realise the full vision of 160 million passengers a year," said Mr Griffiths.

Dubai remains fully committed to Al Maktoum International, he said, which would be the centrepiece of the enormous Dubai World Central Aviation City and residential complex, which will span 140 square kilometres.

"Dubai doesn’t knee-jerk. There is a great deal of confidence in the longer-term future of this market," he said.

Dubai would continue to invest in its aviation infrastructure or else its airport and resident airlines, Emirates and flydubai, would lose competitiveness, he said. "If you run out of capacity you have a big problem, and that is not going to happen here."

Dubai has invested heavily in its aviation infrastructure, as travel and tourism accounts for an estimated 25 per cent of the emirate’s GDP. Last year, Dubai Airports opened the $4.5bn Terminal 3, for Emirates Airline, and a third concourse designed to handle Emirates’s A380 Superjumbo fleet is being built at a cost of $1.1bn. The facility is slated to open in late 2011 and will push capacity to 75 million travellers a year.

Powered by Dubai’s location and the growth of Emirates, Dubai Airport has largely bucked the global downturn in air travel, becoming the only international hub in the top 10 to see record positive growth this year. It currently handles more than 40 million travellers a year and is projecting a 13.4 per cent rise next year.

While "one or two" airlines reduced services to Dubai this year, Mr Griffiths said this was normal, and not indicative of the effects of the global downturn.

Travellers from the Indian subcontinent, Europe and the US were helping drive the growth at Dubai International, he said, while Russians and residents of former soviet states have cut back on travel.

Meanwhile, Dubai Airports is promoting Al Maktoum in advance of its start of operations planned for next year. The airport should get its operating licence next summer, with cargo operations to launch first, followed by passenger flights, Mr Griffiths said.