Dubai International passenger traffic up 8.8% in Feb

Dubai Airports has announced an 8.8 per cent increase in traffic at Dubai International in February to nearly 6.95 million passengers.

The increase brings year to date traffic at the airport up 9.3 per cent to 13.71 million.

During February there was a 39.1 per cent increase in passengers from Eastern Europe, followed by a 23.8 per cent increase from Asia and 11.6 per cent increase from South America.

India remained the airport’s top destination country with 937,962 passengers followed by the UK with 516,511, Saudi Arabia with 499,797 and Pakistan with 351,477.

London (309,768) was the most popular passenger destination followed by Doha (246,767), Bangkok (203,432) and Mumbai (194,108).

Flight movements totalled 32,483 for the month, down 2.7 per cent from the previous year and freight was down 1.9 per cent to 192,704 tonnes.

“This robust growth in passenger numbers in February follows the record 8 million passengers in January, and with the seasonal rush of passengers over the spring break over the past four days – during which we welcomed over 1.1 million passengers, we are looking forward to impressive Q1 results,” said Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths.

Last week, Griffiths said he expected the recently introduced ban on large electronics for passengers’ carry-on luggage when flying to the US would have little impact on traffic.

Read: Dubai Airports CEO says US electronics ban to have little impact on passenger numbers

Dubai International carried 83.6 million passengers last year, an increase of 7.2 per cent on 2015, and is forecasting 89 million passengers this year.

Read: Dubai airport welcomes 83.6m passengers in 2016, remains world’s busiest int’l