Dubai International Airport (DXB) welcomed over 66 million passengers through its doors over 2022, beating its own forecast following a strong fourth quarter. This represents around 76% of its pre-pandemic capacity, with the airport hoping to match 2019’s levels by mid-2024.
DXB returning to form
DXB handled 66,069,981 passengers in 2022, a significant 127% increase year-on-year – however, the airport is still a long way off from reaching the 86.4 million served in 2019.
Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, said,
“We knew it was the year when growth would return to the air travel sector in a big way, but the surge was much stronger than anticipated and we had to do our best to turn that challenge into an opportunity. Thanks to the planning, preparation, and all the collaboration and hard work of our people across the airport community, we were ready to meet the challenge of rapid recovery in customer numbers while delivering significant improvement in our service quality across the board.”
The top destination country by passenger volume was once again India at 9.8 million, followed by Saudi Arabia (4.9 million) and the UK (4.6 million). In fact, some countries have fully recovered their pre-COVID capacity, including Russia (1.9 million) and Turkey (1.6 million). As for individual cities, London came out on top with 3 million passengers, with Riyadh (2 million) and Mumbai (1.9 million) following.
The airport showed off its impressive operational efficiency with a baggage handling success rate of 99.8% after processing a total of 62.2 million bags in 2022, representing a rate of just 2.2 mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers. Additionally, over 96% of departure passengers queued less than five minutes to pass through passport control, while over 95% of arrivals had to wait an average of less than 13 minutes.
“Extraordinary” fourth quarter
The airport exceeded its expectation during the final quarter of 2022 with 19,729,155 passengers served, its busiest quarter since the COVID pandemic and a 67% improvement on Q4 2021. December was the busiest month of 2022 with 7.1 million passengers handled, representing the first time DXB has hit the 7-million mark since January 2020.
There were 96,701 flight movements during the fourth quarter, up 47% year-on-year, and an average of 204 passengers per flight, a 33% improvement. While passenger operations are booming, Dubai’s cargo capacity predictably shrunk by 25.5% over 2022 following the return of major freight operators to Dubai World Central (DWC) and the return of many ‘preighter’ aircraft to passenger operations.
Discover more aviation news with Simple Flying.
Full recovery this year?
The airport is projecting around 78 million passengers will pass through its doors over 2023, aided by China’s reopening earlier this year. DXB currently serves seven destinations in China with around 25 flights a week operated by five airlines, and there is still room for expansion. CEO Griffiths believes the airport should fully recover its pre-pandemic capacity by Q4 2023.
As reported in The Independent, Griffiths commented,
“We’re optimistic that the traffic levels every month will be regularly over the seven million mark, which means that we’re very, very precisely on a trajectory to recover to the pre-pandemic levels, if not this year, certainly by the first half of 2024. If we don’t get back to pre-pandemic levels by Q4 this year I’ll be surprised, but it won’t be much beyond Q4 2023 that we’ll see traffic back to where it was pre-pandemic.”
DXB offers connections to 229 destinations across 99 countries and is served by more than 88 international airlines. The airport was well-prepared for the rapid bounceback in travel demand this year, helping it to avoid the travel chaos seen across much of Europe and North America.
Did you travel through Dubai International Airport (DXB) in 2022? How does the airport compare to other major international hubs? Let us know in the comments.
Source: The Independent