Business unusual for Dubai International Airport

Dubai International Airport (DXB) said on Sunday that its first-quarter passenger traffic fell 2.2 per cent to 22.2 million following a drop in the number of flights due to the grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX.

Dubai Airports, the operator of the emirate's two international airports, said a three per cent reduction in flights in the first quarter was caused by the grounding of 737 MAX and the timing of the Easter break.

Aviation experts said DXB - the world's busiest in transnational passenger traffic - is still on track to record a remarkable traffic growth of up to 100 million next year with Expo 2020 and the continued expansion.

DXB has been maintaining its position as the world's busiest airport for international passengers for the fifth consecutive year with its annual passenger traffic increasing one per cent in 2018 to reach 89.1 million. DXB became the world's busiest airport for international passenger traffic in 2014 when it overtook London's Heathrow Airport.

While India continued to hold to its position as DXB's top destination country by passenger numbers, with traffic for the quarter reaching 3,121,809 - propelled mainly by top city destinations Mumbai, Delhi and Cochin, Saudi Arabia was number two on the list with 1,745,750 customers, followed closely by the UK with 1,511,917customers. Other destination countries of note include Pakistan (1,159,722 customers), the US (764,489 customers), Germany (690,062 customers), China (620,013) and Russia (414,445).

The top three destination cities were London (871,180 customers), Mumbai (624,442) and Jeddah (605,628 customers). GCC was the fastest growing region with growth of 3.8 per cent, followed by North America with 2.7 per cent growth.

Lakshmi Anand, operations manager, International Travel Services, said India could retain its position as the top destination of DXB due to various reasons, including the general elections.

"Indian expats hope the country is going through a big transformation and do not want to miss out the opportunity of casting their votes and elect the right candidate. Another reason for the increased traffic to India is the new Kannur service started by Air India Express at an introductory offer as well as increased frequencies in other Indian routes," she said.

Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at London's StrategicAero Research, said Dubai Airports first-quarter performance shows a robust set of numbers. Despite the Easter shift and the impact on the runway works, it will still end 2019 as the world's busiest international airport, said Ahmad.

"Naturally the operational impact during the next several weeks will temper traffic growth while we see a corresponding spike in traffic at Dubai World Central where a large number of flights have been relocated, but this largely coincides with the slower month of Ramadan, so overall, the impact, scheduling and timing of the runway work has been coordinated very well so as to minimise traffic impact and flight disruptions," he said.

With the Dubai Air Show coming in just six months, third quarter and fourth quarter will be very strong and resurgent as the benefits of a newly revamped runway and on-the-ground efficiencies take hold to enable a big build-up of handling summer traffic to be catered for with ease, said Ahmad.

"Dubai Airports is well accustomed to infrastructure development and so it stands to reason that this runway work and overall performance for the year should see the airport reach between 84 million to 89 million passengers.

"That said, 2020 will be a remarkable year. With the Expo and continued expansion at both DXB and DWC, it is likely that Dubai International will edge closer to 100 million by the end of next year," said Ahmad.

In the first quarter, cargo volumes increased 4.1 per cent to reach 641,250 tonnes as DXB severed a total of 22,230,810 customers while the average monthly volume of 7.41 million was slightly lower than the average monthly traffic of 7.42 million recorded in 2018.

Total passenger flights during the quarter totalled 95,857, down three per cent from last year partially due to the grounding of 737 Max aircraft in effect since March 13 in the UAE.