Dubai: Dubai Airports has not signed any agreements yet with regional or global airlines to launch commercial passenger operations at Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum International (DWC), although the airport plans to launch passenger operations by next year, according to CEO Paul Griffiths.
"We are in discussions with passenger airlines to launch commercial operations from DWC-Al Maktoum International. We haven't got any agreements signed up yet.
"I reckon, towards the end of the year we might be in a position to be able to make some judgement about who might be operating," he told Gulf News.
"But we didn't get the agreements signed on the cargo side also until very shortly before we opened."
When asked about an approximate timeframe in which the airline would sign deals for DWC's commercial operations, Griffiths said: "I expect it to follow the same pattern as cargo launch.
"However, with passenger operations, I believe they will be a little more programmed in their decision-making.
"With cargo, we opened on June 24 last year and it took us a number of months to get a decision out of any of them [cargo carriers] and then suddenly by about March-April, we signed a couple of airlines. And literally weeks before we opened we signed up about 10 or 12 airlines. So we had 22 committed by the time we opened.
"So I imagine if we are looking at an opening [for commercial operations] sometime during 2012, we won't have any news until quite later on."
Financial discounts
Asked if Dubai Airports is offering financial discounts to commercial carriers to start operating from DWC-Al Maktoum International, Griffiths told Gulf News: "What we are doing is we are clearly talking to carriers and saying that we will ensure that it won't cost them any more to operate at DWC than it does to operate at Dubai International." He added: "And we will obviously look at what we can do to assist the transition either from here or from other airports. But that's an individual negotiation we will be doing with each airline."
