Dubai Asias Air Gateway

29 Jan 2013

Dubai international airport has beaten Hong Kong to its claim of handling the highest number of passengers by registering 57.68 people in 2012 against Hong Kong’ s 56.5 million people.

The two busiest airports in the world are London’s Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle of Paris.

Dubai was in a way helped by India by sending the largest number of passengers in the year with 7.4 million passengers, a rise of 7.3% over the previous year.

The point of interest is which can claim to be the gateway in Asia where East meets the West. Clearly it is Dubai with heavy arrivals from India and not Hong Kong, despite being backed the emerging superpower China. Not but not least, Dubai has been helped by the current shopping festival, with heavy passenger arrivals in December last, adding to the final tally of Dubai international airport.

Last month, Dubai opened a huge facility for superjumbo A380s, and the airport expects to handle passenger traffic in the range of 66 million passengers this year.

Along with passengers, the cargo and freight also touched record levels. Freight of 2.28 million tons and cargo 201,949 tons were handled in the year.