By Dominic Welling
Dubai International Airport will become the busiest airport in the world by 2015 as passenger numbers are expected to reach nearly 100 million over the next 10 years.
Dubai Airports - the owner and operator of Dubai International and Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum airports - has forecast that international passenger and cargo traffic in Dubai will increase at an average annual growth rate of 7.2% and 6.7% respectively between now and 2020.
This will see passenger numbers hit 98.5 million and cargo traffic reach 4.1 million tonnes by 2020.
Over the past 50 years passenger traffic at Dubai International has increased at an average annual rate of 15.5%, and since 2005 alone traffic has almost doubled from 24.8 million to 47.2 million last year.
Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, says: "Increased liberalisation, GDP growth and increasingly affluent and mobile populations in emerging markets will combine to propel air travel growth worldwide.
"Dubai is extremely well positioned to capitalise on that growth. We are eight hours from two-thirds of the world's population and on the doorstep of two of the most dynamic markets in the world - India and China.
"The combination of rallying tourism and Dubai's established role as a trading hub linking economies in the Far East, Europe, Africa and North America, are also key advantages."
Airfreight volumes at the two airports are also expected to double from the 2.27 million tonnes recorded in 2010 to 4.1 million tonnes by 2020.
At the moment Dubai International is ranked 4th in the world in terms of international freight volumes and 4th for international passengers, according to Airport Council International's (ACI) 2010 figures.
However this is expected to change over the coming years as Dubai Airports predicts Dubai International will become the world's busiest airport by 2015.
Griffiths adds: "Based on the current pace of growth we are seeing in other large international airports, Dubai International should become the busiest airport in the world for international passenger traffic as early as 2015 when passenger numbers are projected to exceed 75 million."
To help accommodate this growth at Dubai International, Concourse 3, which will be a dedicated A380 facility, is set to open at the end of 2012.
Meanwhile, Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum International, which opened for cargo operations in 2010, will commence passenger services during 2012.
