Dubai airport passengers up 11.4% in Feb

Passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport rose by 11.4 percent in February compared to the same month a year earlier, with the hub registering over 5m travellers.

According to the airport’s latest monthly report, Dubai International handled 5.1m passengers during February, with year-to-date traffic rising 13 percent to 10.6m. Aircraft movements increased 3.8 percent to 27,058.

"We continue to stay ahead of the curve in terms of our traffic forecast of 65.4m passengers in 2013," Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths said in a statement on Tuesday.

In terms of regional passengers, Eastern Europe was the airport’s fastest expanding market with growth of 29.6 percent, propelled by Emirates Airline’s new service to Poland and a new flydubai route to Macedonia.

The number of Asia-Pacific passengers rose 21.8 percent, Russia and CIS by 18.5 percent, the GCC by 16.5 percent and Asia 15 percent. The latter was helped by the introduction of a daily service from Dubai to Manila.

Passengers from the Middle East were the only demographic to show a decrease, Dubai Airports said, falling 1.6 percent year-on-year on the back of regional unrest.

India, the largest national market in terms of passengers to and from Dubai, registered an increase of 10.8 percent, while travellers to and from the UK rose 5.2 percent, and those from Saudi Arabia by 42.3 percent.

Freight volumes to and from the hub increased by 15.9 percent during February to 182,580 tonnes.