The Dubai Airports Authority a, for the second time, revised upwards its passenger traffic estimates for 2022 for the airport Dubai International (DXB)the Emirate's main hub. The new forecast is for 64.3 million passengers.. This revision was prompted by the platform's excellent performance in the third quarter, and by the prospect of further growth in the last three months of 2022.
DXB started the second half of the year with a bang, with average monthly traffic exceeding the 6 million mark throughout the third quarter. The hub recorded 18.46 million passengers in the third quarter. This represents a year-on-year increase of 167.6%. This is the first time that quarterly traffic has reached pre-pandemic levels since 2020. Dubai International actually recorded 17.8 million passengers in the first quarter of 2020, before the pandemic.
Exceed 2019 traffic levels by 2023?
The volume of traffic over the first 9 months represents 72% of pre-pandemic passenger traffic for the same period in 2019.. If the airport confirms a total flow of 64.3 million passengers2022 will reach 74.4% of 2019 trafficwhich reached 86.4 million passengers. It is likely that the airport will exceed its 2019 volume by the end of 2023.
"Passenger traffic growth has been tremendous throughout the year and continues to far exceed our expectations. What really gives us immense satisfaction is the way the airport community is working together to continue to improve service quality. Our collaborative approach and service transformation initiatives are making a tangible difference to customer satisfaction. That remains our ultimate measure of success", said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.
India remains the number one destination for the airport in terms of traffic volume, recording 6.8 million passengers in the first nine months of the year. Saudi Arabia comes second with 3.4 million passengers, followed by the United Kingdom (3.2 million passengers) and the Pakistan (2.7 million passengers). There was also a high volume of traffic to the United States and Australia, with 2.2 million and 1.1 million passengers respectively.
The top three cities in terms of traffic are London (2 million passengers), Riyadh (1.5 million) and Mumbai (1.3 million).
