Dubai International retains title as top international airport
Passenger evolution at Dubai International Airport 2018
Dubai International (DXB) has retained its position as the world’s busiest airport for international customer numbers for the fifth consecutive year, with annual traffic for 2018 surpassing 89.1 million.
Aside from record traffic numbers, DXB enjoyed a banner year for customer service with new retail and food and beverage offerings, all of which are summarised in Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths’ annual video message.
A total of 89,149,387 passengers used the airport for the full year of 2018 (+1%). DXB welcomed 7,722,959 customers in December (-1.7%), taking the average monthly traffic at the hub to 7.4 million for the year.
The 8-million customer mark was breached twice during the year in July (8.2 million) and August (8.4 million) making the latter the busiest month in DXB’s 58-year history.
India continued to hold to its position as DXB’s top destination country by passenger numbers, with traffic for the year reaching 12,279,485 – propelled mainly by top city destinations Mumbai, Delhi and Cochin.
Saudi Arabia was number two on the list with 6,471,142 customers, followed closely by the UK with 6,284,771 customers.
Other destination countries of note included the US (3,205,524 customers) and the fast-growing markets of China (3,512,075) with 6% growth and Russia (1,533,654), which grew 14.5%.
Top three cities were London (3,817,889 customers), Mumbai (2,540,750) and Kuwait (2,194,576).
Eastern Europe was the fastest-growing region with double-digit growth of 16.7%, followed by CIS at 12.9% and Africa growing 9.8%.
Flight movements for the year remained almost flat at 408,251 (-0.3%), while the average number of customers per flight grew slightly to 226 (1.3%) annually.
* CEO Paul Griffiths’ annual video message can be seen on the following YouTube link: https://youtu.be/F-u4UbMEiVw
.jpg?&resize.width=322&resize.height=483)
