Dubai International Airport’s (DXB) CEO says that 78 million people will enter its doors in 2023, after the number of flyers using the facility doubled in 2022.
It will be another year of fresh challenges and opportunities. Paul Griffiths, the CEO of Dubai Airports, said, “We are ready for them.”
The British businessman also added that Dubai will host critical international events like the Dubai Airshow and COP28 in 2023.
According to a statement from the airport operator, DXB, one of the busiest international travel hubs, processed 66 million passengers in 2022, an increase of 127% year over year (y-o-y).
The airport saw 19,729,155 passengers in Q4, a 67% increase from the same period in 2021 and the busiest quarter since 2019. With 7.1 million passengers, December was the busiest month of 2022 and for the first time since January 2020, the airport’s monthly traffic exceeded 7 million.
In 2022, India was the most popular place to fly to from DXB, with 9.8 million passengers. With 4.9 million passengers, Saudi Arabia was second, followed by Pakistan and the UK (3.7 million passengers).
Around 1.9 million Russians passed through DXB throughout the reporting period. Since the Ukraine conflict broke out in early 2022, regional airlines Emirates and FlyDubai have increased their flights to Russian cities. As a result, bookings on Russian outbound flights to Dubai increased twofold week over week in the middle of that year, according to travel data company ForwardKeys.
With 3 million travellers, London was the most popular travel destination, followed by Riyadh (2 million) and Mumbai (1.9 million).
Flight movements at DXB were 96,701 in the fourth quarter, bringing the annual flight movements to 343,339, a growth of 47% year over year. In addition, the average number of passengers per aircraft increased by 33% from the previous year to 204.
With 420,125 tonnes recorded in the fourth quarter, down 31.7% from 614,834 tonnes in Q4 of 2021, cargo volumes continued to decline. Due to the relocation of all significant freight operators back to Dubai World Central (DWC) and the conversion of passenger-freighter aircraft to passenger operations during the year, DXB handled 1,727,815 metric tons of cargo in 2022, a decrease of 25.5%.