Passenger traffic at Dubai International Airport in the UAE rose 8.8% year-on-year in February 2017, with 6,948,157 travelers passing through its terminals.
This brings the total year to date passenger traffic at Dubai International to 14,985,165, a robust growth of 9.3% compared to 13,711,181 recorded during the first two months of 2016.
Eastern Europe was the fastest expanding market in terms of percentage growth (39.1%), followed by Asia (23.8%) and South America (11.6%). India remained the top destination country in February with a total of 937,962 passengers, followed by the UK (516,611), Saudi Arabia (499,797) and Pakistan (351,477). London topped the list of destination cities with 309,768 passengers, followed by Doha (246,767), Bangkok (203,432) and Mumbai (194,108).
Flight movements at the airport totaled 32,483 during February, a contraction of 2.7% from 33,398 movements recorded in February 2016. Year to date flight movements totaled 69,075, a marginal drop of 0.2% compared to the 69,239 during the first two months last year.
The average number of passengers per movement during February reached 223 compared to 201 during the corresponding month in 2016, an increase of 11.1%.
Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, the airport operator, said, “This robust growth in passenger numbers in February follows the record eight million passengers in January, and with the seasonal rush of passengers over the spring break over the past four days – during which we welcomed over 1.1 million passengers, we are looking forward to impressive Q1 results.”