Dubai: Passenger traffic at Dubai International was up once again in September, with nearly five-and-a-half million travellers passing through the airport.
According to a Dubai Airports press release, September’s passenger traffic totalled 5,407,326 million and was a 13.1 per cent increase on the same period in 2012 when 4,780,394 million passengers went through the airport.
Dubai’s main airport continues to witness increasing passenger traffic throughout 2013. Year-to-date traffic is up 16 per cent to 49,379,165 million compared to 42,565,340 travellers recorded for first nine months of 2012. Aircraft movements in September were 30,746 thousand, an increase of 10.2 per cent compared to the 27,909 thousand in the same 2012 period.
Eastern Europe drove Dubai International’s strongest markets in terms of percentage passenger growth with an increase of 65.1 per cent. According to Dubai Airports, this was largely driven by flydubai’s expansion into the region and a new Emirates service to Warsaw. Passenger traffic to Australasia rose by 38.6 per cent with Australia leading on a country level with a 41.7 per cent increase. South America was the only region to record negative growth — dropping by 6.9 per cent.
In terms of overall passenger numbers, Western Europe traffic was the top market with 14.8 per cent growth during the month.
