DUBAI Airports has said it may delay the scheduled March launch of the passenger terminal at its new airport, as it unveiled plans to expand its old airport’s capacity to 90 million passengers by 2018.
“We are currently reviewing the master plan for the new airport,” said Dubai Airports chief executive Paul Griffiths.
“With everything going on time and according to schedule, we are reviewing the opening date for the new terminal and we may push it a little just to get everything right,” he said.
But the opening is still expected to take place before the end of 2011.
In June 2010, the emirate opened Dubai World Central-Al Maktoum International Airport, touted to become the world’s largest when completed. It has so far been confined to cargo.
The airport’s chief also unveiled plans to expand the capacity of Dubai International Airport to 90m passengers a year by 2018, from 60m at present.
“We are about to unveil a master plan for this airport,” he said on the sidelines of a Middle East Business Aviation show.
He said the current capacity of 60m passengers would rise to 75m in 2012 with the opening of concourse three, which is dedicated to serve the Airbus superjumbo A380 aircraft.
“The growth here is going to be very strong and it will take the pressure off us having to complete Al Maktoum airport in quite the timescale we were looking at before,” he added.
Dubai International has grown to be the busiest airport in the Middle East, mostly on the back of the emirate’s national carrier, Emirates.
The airport handled 34.84m passengers in the first nine months of 2010, an increase of 15.8 per cent on the corresponding period of last year.
Griffiths said Dubai Airports wants to develop the new Al-Maktoum airport to handle 90m passengers a year, as soon as possible, to be able to host Emirates in the future.