The Dubai International Airport in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, reported a dip by 70% of the passenger traffic due to last year’s global closures and travel restrictions induced by the coronavirus pandemic.
According to the CGTN news report, “The number of travellers that passed through the major transit hub fell from more than 86 million in 2019 to 25.9 million in 2020,”
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According to Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports:
- “In the past year, we have witnessed the most difficult circumstances the travel industry has ever faced.
- “The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been felt not only in our sector, but across the entire world.”
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global air passenger traffic plunged by an unprecedented 66% last year owing to travel restrictions imposed during the pandemic.
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What you should know
- Dubai International Airport is the world’s busiest airport by international passenger traffic, the seventh-busiest cargo airport in the world, the busiest airport for Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 movements, and the airport with the highest average number of passengers per flight.
- The proximate reason for the drop as well was that the Emirate of Dubai, one of the seven that make up the United Arab Emirates, temporarily closed its airport and suspended flights in early 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
- India accounted for the largest number of passengers at the Dubai airport last year, with 4.3 million Indians travelling through the hub.
- The UK came in second, with 1.89 million people entering the airport, narrowly ahead of Pakistan’s 1.86 million.
- According to the CGTN news report, “’Dubai International Airport had seen its first dip in traffic in 20 years in 2019, when the number of travellers fell by 3.1 percent, but the hub remained the world’s busiest for international passengers”.
