Dubai International Airport is on track to receive its one billionth passenger before the end of the year, underscoring a critical infrastructure challenge at one of the world's busiest international airports, reports CNBC.
"We are likely to get just over 90 million through DXB this year, that's a new record for us," Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths told CNBC's "Capital Connection."
He said the key factors driving that rapid growth in passenger numbers include Dubai's strategic location, its vast network of destinations and the expansion of key routes from Emirates airline and its sister company, flydubai. The airport served 88.2 million passengers last year.
"With 280,000 passengers a day and up to 13,000 bags flown through the hub, the concentration of not only the passenger traffic through DXB, but also the major contribution that it makes to the GDP of Dubai, is obviously incredibly significant," he said.
Dubai Airports owns and manages the operation and development of both of airports in the emirate - Dubai International (DXB) and Dubai World Central (DWC).
But as Dubai International Airport continues to grow, it faces an increasing infrastructure challenge, leading to capacity constraints.
"We are in the midst of a new master plan at the moment for 2030, which will see us boost the capacity of this airport by a further 30 million to 120 million by 2022," Griffths said.
"The newer airport, Dubai World Central Al Maktoum International, already has the capacity for a further 26 million passengers. So across the two airports, 146 million total airport capacity is a pretty impressive number and it will still give us the headroom for significant further growth here in Dubai," the CEO said.
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