The FINANCIAL — High volumes and steady growth continued at Dubai International in April with more than 6.5 million passengers passing through the airport, according to the monthly traffic report issued by operator Dubai Airports on June 18.
Passenger numbers rose 5.7 per cent to 6,510,653 up from 6,159,634 in April 2014. This is the third time in the first four months that monthly traffic at the hub has surpassed the 6.5 million mark. During the first four months of 2014, Dubai International welcomed 26,116,980 passengers, compared to 24,521,454 passengers during the same period last year, an increase of 6.5 per cent.
Eastern Europe achieved the highest growth rate during April with routes to the region registering a surge of 74.6 per cent, driven mainly by flydubai’s new services to Slovakia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Croatia, and Emirates service to Hungary and Transavia airline to Bulgaria. Other regions that registered high growth rates include North America (17.9 per cent) – where Emirates has increased capacity on many destinations and launched a new route to Chicago – and the Indian subcontinent (12.6 per cent). Political and economic instability continued to affect traffic on Russian and the CIS routes (-27.6 per cent).
In terms of passenger numbers the Indian subcontinent outperformed the rest of the regions (+167,652 passengers), followed by the GCC (+92,069 passengers), and Western Europe (65,175).
Total aircraft movements reached 33,279 in April 2014, climbing 6.5 per cent from 31,234 movements recorded in April last year. In the first four months of the year, total aircraft movements rose 6 per cent to 133,493 movements from 125,928 recorded in the same period in 2014. The average number of passengers per movement was 206.2 during April down by 3.3 per cent from April 2014, while the year-to-date (April) average was 206.4 passengers, down by 2 per cent from the same period last year.
Dubai International recorded freight volumes totalling 204,075 in April, a contraction of 3.6 per cent compared to 211,588* tonnes recorded in April 2014. Year to date cargo totalled 798,771, a contraction of 4.7 per cent compared to 837,837 during the first four months in 2014. The decline is caused by the shift of all freighter cargo operations to DWC last year.
“Traffic grew steadily in the first four months of the year and the trend looks set to continue throughout the first half, especially with the summer travel peak just round the corner,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports.
“We are again expecting record traffic levels at Dubai International this summer and again we will be deploying additional resources from the kerb to the boarding gates to ease the flow of passengers through our facility,” he added.
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