The FINANCIAL — According to Gulfnews, passenger growth at Dubai International Airport (DIA) in the second quarter will be better than achieved in the first three months of 2009, the facility's operator said.
Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports, said April traffic was "encouraging."
The airport will release figures for the month soon.
"Early indications suggest that we may have a slightly better [second] quarter than the first quarter," he told reporters.
Griffiths said he is "very confident" that the region's transport hub will achieve positive growth this year.
In the first quarter this year, passenger traffic was 9.5 million, an increase of two per cent over the corresponding period in 2008.
Passengers using the airport last year grew by nine per cent to 37.4 million, with transit traffic accounting for about 60 per cent.
Dubai is still seeing passenger growth while traffic is declining at major world airports due to the travel industry being hit by the global recession.
The emirate is pushing ahead with its airport expansion plans with the aim of becoming the world's number one air transport hub.
Dubai Airports plans to open the initial phase of Al Maktoum International Airport in Jebel Ali in June next year. The passenger terminal will have a capacity to handle nine million passengers a year.
"This is the first step towards a long-term strategy for establishing the world's largest airport," Griffiths said.
When fully developed, the airport will have a capacity to handle 160 million passengers a year, almost double the throughput at the world's current largest airport in Atlanta.
Griffiths said Dubai is making itself more attractive as a hub against the major established airports in Europe and Asia for transit passengers.
"We now find ourselves thrust right into the forefront of consumer competition and we are competing very handsomely against Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle, Singapore and other major hubs for traffic," he said.
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