Dubai International Airport (DXB) has reported the busiest first three months since 2020, with over 13.6m travellers in quarter one of 2022, highlighting that traffic recovery is at a fast pace at the world’s busiest international hub. This is the second quarter consecutively when tourist traffic at DXB has passed the mark of 10 million.
In March, the passenger traffic was bolstered by 5.5m, DXB’s traveller volumes increased to 13.6m during the first quarter of 2022, which is up by 15.7% compared to 11.8m travellers in the last quarter of 2021. By comparison, DXB reports 5.7 million passengers during the first quarter of 2021.
DXB is presently linked to 193 destinations around 92 countries through 73 scheduled international carriers.
DXB also managed 519,555 tonnes of cargo in the first quarter of 2022, a decrease of 15.5% as compared to last quarter (Quarter 4 of 2021), in which the hub reported 614,834 tonnes of airfreight.
In the first quarter, flight movements totalled to 81,966, which is a rise of 5.8% compared to the previous quarter of 2021, in which 77,475 flights were recorded at DXB.
India has maintained its longstanding position as DXB’s top destination country, with tourist traffic touching 1.6m, followed by Saudi Arabia sending passenger traffic of 1.1m, Pakistan (997K) and the UK (934K tourists). The top three cities in terms of tourist numbers were London (617K passengers), followed by Riyadh (517K), Jeddah (337K), observed near by Istanbul (324K passengers).
CEO of Dubai Airports, Paul Griffiths, said, “DXB’s performance over the last successive quarters is nothing short of remarkable and is a direct result of Dubai’s clear strategy and measures to restore international air connectivity and mobility and lead the global aviation industry out of an unusual crisis. While the recovery was initially directed by point-to-point traffic, which persists in exceeding pre-pandemic levels, the opening of international travel across many key markets has enabled transfer traffic to rebound to 60% of 2019 levels.”