Dubai Airport remains No. 1 for handling global passengers in 2015

Dubai International remained the world’s busiest airport for international travel previous year with a 10.7 percent rise in passenger numbers, its operator said on Monday.

It has just been confirmed: Dubai International is still the busiest international airport in the world.

The Mideast gateway surpassed London Heathrow as the busiest handler of worldwide travelers in 2014. Heathrow saw 75 million passengers pass through its doors in 2015, up 2.2 percent, according to figures on its website.

Dubai Airports Chief Executive Paul Griffiths said 2015 was “another banner year” for the airport, according to Monday’s statement.

It still has a ways to go to top Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as the world’s busiest airport overall. Past year it also overhauled the former global No. 5, Los Angeles, even as the USA hub added 4.3 million passengers to reach 74.94 million. Air Canada, Germany’s Eurowings and China Southern also began operating in Dubai. It was the second time in the year after August when monthly traffic exceeded the seven million mark. DIA added that this regional growth was stimulated by Emirates’ network expansion and growth on routes. Throughout 2015, there were 403,500 movements, or 14.1% more than in 2014.

India retained its position as Dubai’s single-largest destination country in 2015 with 10.39 million passengers, a year-on-year growth of 17 per cent compared to 8.91 in 2014.

Freight volumes in December jumped five per cent to 218,000 tonnes.

In terms of destination cities served by DXB, Doha retained the top spot with 2.7 million passengers (+18%) followed closely by London with 2.6 million (+1%) and Mumbai with 2.2 million passengers (+14%).

Now around 100 airlines connect Dubai International to more than 240 destinations around the world. The UK was placed second with 5,682,307 passengers (+6 per cent) followed closely by Saudi Arabia at 5,466,358 (+12 per cent).

Despite the transfer of all pure cargo operators from Dubai International to Dubai World Central, cargo volumes remained relatively steady with 2.51 million tonnes of airfreight passing through in 2015.