Dubai builds world's largest airport in the desert

Construction of Al Maktoum International Airport, which will be able to handle 160 million passengers, will take decades in the desert near Dubai.

Dubai first announced plans to expand Al Maktoum into the world's largest airport a decade ago. Photo: Dubai Airports — Dubai first announced plans to expand Al Maktoum into the world's largest airport a decade ago. Photo: *Dubai Airports*

More than 10 years ago, Al Maktoum International Airport, also known as Dubai World Central (DWC), located about 32 kilometers southwest of downtown Dubai, was designed to become the largest and busiest airport in the world in the near future. Dubai Airports, the operator of Dubai International Airport (DXB), and the new airport promised that when DWC is completed, the facility will be able to handle more than 160 million passengers a year and 12 million tons of cargo. That's nearly 63 million more passengers than the world's current busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (2022), and nearly 100 million more passengers than Dubai International Airport, according to CNN .

But a decade after its first passenger flight and 13 years since it first opened to cargo, Dubai’s newest airport is still in development. DWC has become a hub for aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). It also hosts several air cargo carriers, such as Emirates Cargo, and handles private jets and some ad hoc flights. Scheduled passenger services, however, are limited to a handful of low-cost carriers operating mainly in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia.

At the recent Dubai Airshow at DWC, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, revealed that they are prioritizing expansion and investment at DXB to meet customer demand, increasing the airport’s annual passenger capacity from 100 million to 120 million. The DXB expansion will not only help meet growth in the near future, but also give authorities more time to determine the DWC expansion strategy in Phase 2.

Griffiths shared at the exhibition the design for the new mega-airport, but the miniature 3D model on display showed six parallel runways and three giant terminals that were already outdated. However, Griffiths revealed a modular approach to gradually expanding DWC over a timeframe that could stretch into the 2050s. "We're not planning an airport with terminals. We're going to completely change the business model for airports, making them more human and removing all the processes that customers have had to follow for so long," Griffiths said.

DWC will be the centrepiece of a much larger scheme called Dubai South, which will create a completely new city spread across 145 square kilometres of desert in southern Dubai. The new urban area is taking shape, planned to include eight neighbourhoods divided by specific industries or activities, combining residential and commercial areas. With the airport at its centre, the project will form an aviation megacity. In the future, Emirates and its partner flyDubai will move from DXB to DWC.

An Khang (According to CNN )

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