Dubai airport 2015 traffic up 10.7 pct world's busiest
(MENAFN- The Peninsula) Additional airlines and routes lifted the traffic through Dubai Airport. Reuters
By Nadia Saleem
DUBAI: Dubai International Airportremained the world's busiest for international passengers in2015 as traffic grew 10.7 percent boosted by the addition ofnew airlines and routes the airport's operator said on Monday.
Annual traffic rose to 78 million passengers from 70.5million in 2014. In the month of December alone traffic climbed8.5 percent to 7.05 million people.
The addition of 12 new passenger destinations from DubaiInternational lifted traffic through the airport as localcarriers Emirates and flydubai expanded. Air Canada Germany's Eurowings and China Southern also beganoperating in Dubai.
Last year saw regional tensions and conflicts in countriesincluding Yemen Iraq and Syria but Dubai Airports ChiefExecutive Paul Griffiths said in a telephone interview: "Wehaven't seen any impact from regional conflicts."
Dubai initially overtook London's Heathrow to become theworld's busiest airport for international traffic in 2014.Heathrow saw 75.0 million passengers pass through its doors in2015 up 2.2 percent according to figures on its website.
India retained its position as Dubai's single largestdestination country in 2015 with 10.4 million passengers up 17percent.
The airport operator is currently testing its new $1.2billion Concourse D which will accommodate foreign airlinesthat now use Concourse C giving Emirates room to grow.
Concourse D is expected to start operating this quarter;Griffiths said the exact date would depend on the results of apublic trial set to begin in a few days.
Cargo volumes at Dubai International grew 3.4 percent to2.51 million tonnes last year despite the transfer of all purecargo operations to the new Dubai World Central airport.December freight volumes rose 5 percent year-on-year to 218408tonnes the operator said.
Reuters