DUBAI: Dubai World Central (DWC) welcomed a total of 900,000 passengers in 2018 (-0.5%) following a surge in customer numbers in Q3 (+26.1%) and moderate growth in Q4 (+3%) last year, thanks to the launch of new services from scheduled and charter carriers during the second half of the year.
Top destinations
The top regions contributing to growth in traffic at DWC include CIS (408,747 passengers) which grew by 44.4%, Western Europe (196,355 passengers) surging 107.9%, and Eastern Europe (186,655 passengers), which grew 3.7%. Russia was the top country destination with customer traffic reaching 405,976 followed by Germany (169,307) and Lebanon (55,103 customers).
Some of the top destination cities during the year were Moscow (121,049 passengers), Beirut (55,103 passengers), and Katowice (43,906 passengers).
Flights
A total of 29,959 flights took off or landed at DWC during 2018 (-12.4% YoY).
Cargo
DWC moved a total of 258,375 tonnes of freight in Q4 bringing the total cargo volume for the year to 987,986 tonnes (+1.6%).
Outlook
DWC is gearing up for a major surge in activity in the second quarter of 2019, when the Southern Runway Refurbishment project will be underway at Dubai International (DXB). The closure of DXB’s Southern runway from April 16 to May 30th, 2019 will reduce the airport’s capacity making DWC an attractive alternate to absorb affected scheduled, charter, cargo and general aviation operations. The 45-day period will be a great opportunity for the emerging airport to showcase its newly expanded facilities that can now accommodate up to 26.5 million passengers annually.
DWC is currently served by 10 passenger airlines which operate an average of 21 weekly flights to seven international destinations. It is also home to 20 cargo operators that fly to as many as 45 cities around the world. BIZ TODAY MONITOR
