Dubai: Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates airline and Group, said on Tuesday that Arab airlines are having an increasingly visible global presence. He made the comments at the 47th Arab Air Carriers Organisation (AACO) Annual General Meeting at the event’s official opening dinner held in Dubai on Tuesday night, according to an Emirates statement.
“Forty-seven years ago, in 1967, the world’s airlines transported less than 300 million passengers annually. Today, airlines serve an estimated 3.3 billion passengers,” he said.
“The 31 airline members of AACO are playing a bigger role in world air traffic than ever before. According to figures from Airbus, in less than 10 years between 2003 and 2013, the number of passengers carried by airlines in Middle East and North Africa has increased by more than 300 per cent,” he added
Shaikh Ahmad further said that travellers are increasingly choosing to fly via the Arab world to get from the East to the West, or North to South, over the traditional European hubs.
“This huge shift in global aviation is a success story for all of us. As individual airlines, and together with our home countries, we have made the world sit up and take notice,” he said.
