Dubai Airport will Become 3rd Busiest Airport by 2020

Dubai International Airport which is currently 4th busiest airport in the world by international passenger traffic is expected to overtake London Heathrow Airport(LHR) by 2020. In January 2012 Dubai Airport(DXB) is the 6th busiest cargo airport in world with 2.27 million tonnes of cargo in 2011.

Heathrow Airport which currently is the 3rd busiest airport in world is expected to have 90 million passenger capacity by 2020 and Dubai International Airport is targeting 98 million passengers by 2020. In 2011 Heathrow Airport reported 70 million passengers while Dubai International Airport reported 51 million Passengers. At the moment 90 airlines operating at Heathrow Airport which serving 180 destinations all over the world while 150 airlines are operating at Dubai International Airport and serving more than 200 destinations. Comparing Aircraft Movement in 2011, Heathrow Airport reported 480,000 flights a year while Dubai International Airport reported 326,317 flights. Dubai International Airport targeting 560,000 flights by 2020.

Simon Baugh, Director of Media Relations at BAA Airports, told Khaleej Times reporter: “Dubai International, unfortunately, will probably overtake us as the third busiest international airport at some point of time in this decade.

According to Simon Baugh: “Heathrow Airport is currently working on 99.3% of total capacity and there is no more space for more flights and also UK aviation authority does not allow night flights such as Heathrow Airport does not allow flights from 11:30pm to 6:00am”.

Simon Baugh said: “There is room to growth only by putting more passengers on bigger plane as we cannot have more flights. We have 140 passengers per aircraft and we need to have 170-180 passengers to get 90 million passengers target. While Dubai International reported 184 average passengers’ numbers per aircraft movements in 2011”.

According to a poll conducted by Priority Pass in 2009, Dubai International Airport is one of world’s favorite Airport. Previously, Dubai International Airport has been winning as Middle East’s leading Airport for last 4 years now. Department of Civil Aviation is planning to invest $7.8billions on Dubai International Airport expansion to boost increase passengers capacity from 60 millions to 90 millions by 2018.

According to Khaleej Times reporter that by the end of 2012 Dubai International Airport is expecting the completion of Concourse 3. That will be the world’s largest dedicated A380 facility at any airport.