A little over ten years ago, in October 2013, a Wizz Air A320 arriving from Budapest made news when it landed at Al Maktoum International Airport, popularly called Dubai World Central (DWC), as the first-ever commercial passenger flight.
In the not-too-distant future, this brand-new “greenfield” airport, located about 20 miles southwest of downtown Dubai, was intended to become the busiest and largest in the world. The goal was and remains to create a futuristic mega-hub that would guarantee the emirate’s continued status as a significant hub of the world economy and prevent capacity issues shortly.
After Al Maktoum International is completed, Dubai Airports, the airport authority that oversees both Dubai International (DXB) and the new airport, claims that it will be able to accommodate more than 160 million passengers annually in addition to 12 million tonnes of freight.
To put that into perspective, in 2022, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International, the busiest airport in the world, handled approximately 63 million fewer passengers than that of Dubai International, which handled nearly 100 million more. Remember that DXB serves as Dubai’s primary international gateway and is currently the busiest airport in the world outside of the United States.
Nevertheless, 13 years after it first opened for cargo operations and a decade and a pandemic after that first passenger flight, Dubai’s newest airport is still very much a work in progress.
DWC has established itself as a hub for aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul, or “MRO” as it is known in the business. Along with handling executive jets and some charter flights, it also serves several air cargo operators, such as Emirates Cargo, the freight division of the flag carrier of the United Arab Emirates.
However, the only scheduled passenger services available are those offered by a small number of low-cost airlines, most of which fly to Eastern Europe, Russia, and Central Asia.
What then has transpired with those ambitious plans? When can we expect to see updated designs or a timeline?
‘Airport of the future’
The latest Dubai Air Show, which took place in 2023 at Al Maktoum International Airport in a specially constructed space, provided some fascinating teases about what lies ahead for DWC as well as some understanding of Dubai Airports’ long-term plan.
“We have prioritized expansion and investments at DXB to meet our customers’ requirements and plans,” Paul Griffiths, Dubai Airports CEO, tells CNN. “This will continue until all possible capacity is absorbed.”
The plan is to maximize current capacity through “the application of innovative technology and refurbishments to rethink the use of space,” says Griffiths, adding another 20 million passengers to DXB’s current annual capacity of 100 million passengers.
“This expansion will not only accommodate near-term growth but also provide us with additional time to strategize for the phased expansion of DWC. Our passenger forecasts for 2023 stand at 86.8 million, with projections of 88.2 million and 93.8 million for 2024 and 2025, respectively,” he adds.
Griffiths has been careful not to confirm a timeline, but in November 2023 he told the AFP news agency that when capacity is reached “we are going to need a new airport […] That is going to have to happen at some stage during the 2030s.”
“DWC is a thrilling prospect,” Griffiths told CNN in January this year. “The future Phase 2 development represents a significant opportunity, allowing us to build from the ground up in alignment with Dubai’s broader goals and growth plans.”
Griffiths told reporters at the air show that designs are already being produced for the new mega-airport, but the massive, three-dimensional scale model displayed at the event, with its six parallel runways and three gigantic terminals, is already some years outdated.
Changing the business model
However, Griffiths has hinted to Business Traveller magazine about an intriguing modular approach to gradually expand DWC on a timeline that might run into the 2050s. “We are not planning an airport that has terminals,” he said. “We’re going to completely change the business model for airports, make them far more intimate, and get rid of all the legacy processes that we’ve had to subject our customers to, for far too long.”
The airport will serve as the hub of the much bigger Dubai South project, which plans to build an entirely new city on a 145-square-kilometer area of desert directly south of Dubai.
Eight neighborhoods, each dedicated to a particular industry or activity, will make up this entire new district, portions of which are already beginning to take shape. There will also be a mix of residential and commercial areas.
It will create a whole “aerotropolis” with the airport at its center. A key component of this vision will be the Mohammed bin Rashid (MBR) Aerospace Hub, which will house Dubai’s growing aviation and aerospace industrial ecosystem, including the recently announced $950 million Emirates Engineering Center.
The real turning point, however, will come the day local giant Emirates and its smaller partner, flyDubai, relocate to the new airport from their current home at Dubai International. Although this move has been planned for a while, the exact timing is unknown.
The University of Surrey in England’s Nadine Itani, the program leader for air transport management, claims that Emirates’ move to DWC is more than just a simple move.
“It’s a strategic realignment in response to the changing dynamics of the global air travel and trade market,” says the aviation expert, who notes that Dubai’s bet on DWC as a future mega-hub is not an isolated move. There is currently a race in the region to invest in new, large-scale airport facilities and no one wants to lag.
Flag carriers in the area are eager to position their capital cities as international trade hubs, seize a piece of the world’s travel market, and increasingly, become tourist destinations in and of themselves. These efforts will be assisted by gleaming new airports.
“There has been a notable shift in the incoming traffic mix into Dubai with a decrease in connecting passengers and an increase in terminating passengers, coupled with the anticipated surge in transport and logistics activity due to Dubai’s role in the planned trade agreements such as the [India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor],” says Itani.
Inaugurated as recently as 2014, Hamad International Airport in nearby Qatar, a direct competitor of Dubai in the long-haul connectivity market, is gearing up to expand its capacity to more than 60 million annual passengers.
This adds to other airport expansion projects in the region: the opening of a $1.8 billion brand new airport in Muscat, Oman, in 2018, the $1.1 billion new terminal in Bahrain in 2021, and, more recently, in November 2023, of Abu Dhabi’s grand new Terminal A, a 780,000-square-meter facility able to handle up to 79 aircraft simultaneously.
At the northern end of the Gulf, Kuwait International Airport is building a new terminal designed by renowned British architectural firm Foster+Partners, which will have the capacity to handle 25 million passengers per year initially, with the possibility of doubling it up to 50 million in the future.
Kuwait International Airport is constructing a new terminal at the northern tip of the Gulf that will be designed by the world-famous British architectural firm Foster+Partners. The terminal’s capacity will start at 25 million passengers annually and can be increased to 50 million in the future.
Additionally, Sharjah International Airport, which is mainly home to low-cost airline Air Arabia and is located less than 20 miles from Dubai’s downtown, is expanding to accommodate 20 million passengers annually.
As part of its 2030 Vision, which has set aside $100 billion to support the kingdom’s air connectivity and elevate it to the status of one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, Saudi Arabia is also preparing a massive airport expansion.
The Saudi capital will get a massive new airport in addition to a new international airline, Riyadh Air. The present airport in Riyadh will be completely replaced by a new six-runway airport that will be constructed in its place. It will be able to accommodate 185 million passengers annually, which is nearly seven times more than it did in 2022.
The stakes are higher than ever for claiming the top spot in the global airport league tables.