Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, saw a record 92.3 million passengers pass through its terminals in 2024, officials announced Thursday (January 30, 2025).
The result cements Dubai’s bounce-back from the coronavirus pandemic, surpassing the previous record set in 2018 for the first time. Today, the airport feels like it’s bursting at the seams with aircraft movements and crowds moving through its cavernous terminals.
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Authorities plan to move operations in 2032 to the city-State’s second airport after a nearly $35 billion upgrade.
Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, first announced the new passenger figure on X. The state-owned airport is home to the long-haul carrier Emirates, which powers the network of state-owned and state-linked businesses known as “Dubai Inc.”
“Dubai is the airport of the world … and a new world in the aviation sector,” Sheikh Mohammed wrote.
Speaking with The Associated Press, Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths pointed to the fact that the airport had served more than 700 million passengers over the last decade — closing in on twice the population of the United States.
The 2024 result “is not only a record for us, of course, but as the No. 1 airport in the world, it’s a new world record for international passengers through any airport in the world,” Mr. Griffiths said. “And the great thing is that’s with two runways on a very limited geographical footprint, which hasn’t really changed at all.”
In 2023, the airport, known as DXB, had 86.9 million passengers. Its 2019, traffic was 86.3 million passengers. It had 89.1 million passengers in 2018 — its previous busiest-ever year before the pandemic, while 66 million passengers passed through in 2022.
In 2024, India remained the top destination market for DXB, with 12 million passengers. Saudi Arabia followed with 7.6 million and the United Kingdom at 6.2 million. DXB and Al Maktoum International Airport, known as DWC, serve 106 airlines flying to 272 cities in 107 countries across the world.
A real-estate boom and the city’s highest-ever tourism numbers have made Dubai a destination as well as a layover. However, the city is now grappling with increasing traffic and costs pressuring both its Emirati citizens and the foreign residents who power its economy.
Dubai plans to move its airport operations to Al Maktoum International Airport, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) away from DXB. The airport, which opened in 2010 with one terminal, served as a parking lot for Emirates’ double-decker Airbus A380s and other aircraft during the pandemic. But since then, it has slowly returned to life with cargo, commercial and private flights. It also hosts the biennial Dubai Air Show and has a vast, empty desert in which to expand.
Griffiths said that authorities plan to move Emirates, its low-cost sister airline FlyDubai and others to DWC by 2032. Computer-rendered images show the facility as having a curving, white terminal reminiscent of the traditional Bedouin tents of the Arabian Peninsula. Plans call for it to have five parallel runways and 400 aircraft gates.
With DXB already having so-called smart gates that can do facial recognition to speed passengers through immigration, Griffiths said that building DWC offered an opportunity to rethink traditional airport designs of separate locations for ticketing, security and other checks.
It should be “a bit like a really well-designed railway station — you should arrive at the airport, face recognition through the gate and immediately you are at leisure,” he said. “You can shop, you can dine, you can go into a lounge. You’ve got more time, which hopefully will turn into more income for the airport and will pay for the processes and the reengineering.”
Dubai’s passenger numbers have been ahead of its traditional rival for international travel, London’s Heathrow Airport, for a decade now. On Wednesday, the U.K. government backed the construction of a third runway at Heathrow, a decadeslong debate for the airport.
However, Griffiths said that he remained confident Dubai would remain ahead.
“I wouldn’t mind betting that when DWC Phase 2 opens, they’ll still be talking about Heathrow runway three and no spade will have gone into the ground,” he said.
Published – January 30, 2025 09:22 pm IST
