Dubai: The holiday travel season hit its peak on December 19 as more than 133,000 passengers, 150,000 bags and over 540 flights from around the world landed at Dubai’s two airports, dnata, the airlines services arm of Emirates, said in a statement on Monday.
To ensure each passenger, flight and piece of luggage was handled properly, dnata said it had over 4,400 staff working between the two hubs — Dubai International and Al Maktoum International-DWC, and deployed over 7,000 vehicles airside, including baggage conveyor belts, passenger steps, pushback tractors, and baggage tractors.
“Our teams have never dealt with so many passengers and bags on a single day and they handled the pressure really well,” said Nick Moore, dnata’s Senior Vice President, Airline Services.
dnata handles all flights and baggage at Dubai International (DXB) and Dubai World Central (DWC), as well as all passengers transiting though DWC and those accessing Terminals 1 and 2 at DXB. The integrated air services company helps passengers from more than 125 airlines, departing or arriving Dubai, or in transit en route to their final destination, dnata stated.
At DXB alone, dnata said, it assisted 131,414 passengers and 149,449 bags get to their holiday destinations. This represents more than 14 per cent increase in the number of passengers using the airport during the same time last year. The dnata team “successfully” managed more than 1,000 aircraft movements at DXB, it stated.
The most travelled sector from Dubai was Doha with over 4,000 passengers making the journey to the busy hub, and 4,400 bags meeting travellers at the destination.
dnata is the sole ground handler at Dubai International Airport and Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central.
