No full recovery until 2024, says Dubai airports chief

Passenger visitors at Dubai worldwide airport, the world’s busiest, won’t get better to pre-Covid ranges earlier than 2024, its CEO instructed AFP on Tuesday.

Visitors stays “nowhere close to pre-pandemic ranges” regardless of rising to 29.1 million passengers final yr, Dubai Airports chief Paul Griffiths mentioned in an interview.

The figures introduced on Tuesday, up 12.7 p.c from 2020, imply that Dubai stays the world’s busiest airport for the eighth consecutive yr.

Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless a good distance from the 86 million passengers seen in 2019, earlier than the pandemic ravaged the air trade.

“We’re nowhere close to the pre-pandemic ranges,” mentioned Griffiths, including that Dubai had weathered the storm higher than many different airports.

“I believe it is fairly gratifying that for the eighth yr in succession we’re nonetheless the world’s busiest worldwide airport, in order that’s an excellent statistic,” he mentioned.

“It implies that though our figures aren’t what we want them to be, different airports have clearly fared so much worse than we’ve.”

Passenger figures collapsed to 25.9 million in 2020, a drop of 70 p.c, when Dubai airport was closed from March to July and fleets have been grounded around the globe.

Greater than a 3rd of final yr’s passengers flew within the remaining quarter, when journey restrictions eased and Dubai opened its Expo 2020 world exhibition and hosted the Dubai airshow, the world’s first because the pandemic.

This yr, the airport is projecting 57 million passengers however is hoping to exceed the goal, Griffiths mentioned.

“Fifty-seven is our projection for 2022, but when present development charges proceed, I hope we’ll smash by that focus on and we count on I believe by the top of 2023 to be a lot nearer to the pre-pandemic ranges,” he mentioned.

He mentioned an easing of restrictions within the Asia-Pacific area, the place Australia reopened its borders to vaccinated vacationers this week, would gas the restoration.

“The gradual restoration in a few of the transport markets due to the restrictions, significantly in Australasia and Asia… as they begin to fall away, the transport visitors by Dubai will surge forward and we’ll see a restoration which we imagine can be very sturdy,” Griffiths mentioned.

“Nonetheless what I might say is that the present development charges that we have seen and the restoration in all the main markets is extremely sturdy.”

India remained the highest vacation spot from Dubai with 4.2 million passengers, adopted by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Britain, whereas the variety of flight actions rose 28.1 p.c year-on-year to 233,375.