Dubai International Airport in the UAE on course to achieve its target of handling 70 million passengers this year, according to Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the chairman of Dubai Airports.

The recent refurbishment of two runways at the airport was a strategic infrastructure development which would facilitate traffic growth, said Sheikh Ahmed, who is also the president of the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA) and chairman and chief executive of Emirates Airline and Group. 

In a message in the September edition of Via Dubai, the newsletter of DCAA, he said: “The project has been acknowledged as the biggest specialised refurbishment of airport runways in the modern history of civil aviation. Dubai International Airport, ranked the world’s second busiest airport for international passengers in 2013, is now ready to reap the benefits of this major investment and remarkable achievement.”

He added: “We are working with confidence to accomplish our goal of welcoming 70 million passengers by the end of 2014. All performance indicators strongly suggest that we will be able to achieve our objective.

“The airport has been receiving five million passengers every month since the past 18 consecutive months, a strong indicator of the growing importance of Dubai as a most sought-after air connectivity hub.”

Sheikh Ahmed said the refurbishment will help Dubai’s aviation industry a great deal in absorbing the anticipated increase in aircraft movements in the UAE, which are expected to jump to 1.2 million movements by 2020.

Commenting on the improvements, DCCA director general Mohammed Ahli said: “The upgraded runways would go a long way in handling the air traffic which has been consistently growing between five to seven per cent annually, higher than the global average of 3.5 per cent.”

The runways now have high speed turnoffs (HSTs) allowing aircraft to vacate them quicker and permitting another to land or depart in a shorter space of time adding that aircraft arrivals are to be increased from the present 33 to 45 an hour by 2016.

The UAE’s airspace system currently handles approximately 600,000 movements a year. Dubai is projected to handle 660,000 movements by 2020. Dubai’s passenger and cargo aircraft movements are projected to go reach 416,650 and 35,000, respectively, in 2015.  

Meanwhile, Hamad Al Janahi, head of human resources at DCAA, said the authority’s ‘Emiratisation’ programme has been progressing well with a 28 per cent increase in a span of less than six years, surging from 42 per cent in 2008 to 70 per cent in 2014.

He said the Emiratisation in higher management has reached 100 per cent while it stands at 77 per cent at the middle management levels.

The number of DCAA employees has increased by 15 per cent since the opening of Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai World Central (DWC) with cargo operations in 2010 and passenger services in 2013.

In 2014, the number of DCAA employees rose to a total of 105, of which 73 were Emiratis.-TradeArabia News Service