São Paulo – The Dubai International Airport (DXB) was the world’s busiest last year in the number of international passengers, as reported by the airport operator Dubai Airports this Tuesday (24). In 2016, 83.6 million passengers went through the airport’s terminals, a 7.2% climb over the results of the previous year, when it had 78 million passengers.
In December, the emirate’s airport registered 7.7 million passengers, a performance boosted by the holiday season. Compared to December 2015, traffic went up 9.3%.
For six times last year, DXB broke the 7 million passenger monthly mark. In August, it broke the monthly record: 7.72 million passengers.
In 2016, new airlines, such as Nepal Airlines and Rossiya, started operations in the airport. Plus, flydubai, Emirates and other companies launched eleven new destinations from DXB.
India remains the top destination country for flights taking off from Dubai, due also to the capacity increase and launching of new services by airlines Spice Jet, Jet Airways, Air India and others. During the year, 11.4 million passengers travelled to the country, an increase of 10.1% over 2015’s results.
Saudi Arabia was the second largest destination country with an 11.3% increase, totaling 6.09 million passengers, slightly above third place United Kingdom with 6.06 million passengers in the year, an increase of 6.7%.
As for destination cities, London came on top last year with 3.7 million passengers, surpassing Doha, Qatar, which had 3 million passengers. Mumbai, India, was third place with 2.4 million passengers.
Last year, DXB also posted the best average number of passengers per flight with 209, an increase of 4% over 2015. In December, the average reached 224 passengers per flight.
Aircraft traffic totaled 418,200 last year, up 2.8% over 2015. Near 2.6 million tons of cargo were handled at the Dubai airport in 2016, up 5.4% over the volume of the previous year.
According to Paul Griffiths, Dubai Airports’ CEO, the forecast points to DXB having 89 million passengers in 2017, retaining the leadership in terms of international passengers, and closing the gap to Atlanta, United States, and Beijing, China, in overall traffic.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
