Dubai Became One Of The Most Important Aviation Hubs In The World

Photo credit: Kamran Jebreili/AP

From the balcony of Stewart Angus’ office overlooking Dubai International Airport it isn’t obvious why Dubai has become one of the world’s most important cities in aviation–and a dangerous rival to many of Asia’s premier airports and carriers. Sure, there’s the big, six-year-old terminal dedicated to Emirates Airlines. An Airbus A380 taxis to the gate. Cars speed along a highway while the city’s ever soaring skyline stretches in the distance.
But Dubai handled 66.4 million passengers last year, making it the seventh-busiest airport in the world. This year it should pass Tokyo, London’s Heathrow, Los Angeles and Chicago’s O’Hare, and climb to third place–behind only Beijing and Atlanta. As recently as 2006 it wasn’t in the top 30. “The success is Dubai’s location–it’s Europe’s most easterly hub and Asia’s most westerly hub,” explains Angus, a seasoned Brit who has worked for the Emirates Group for 19 years and oversees international business for the group’s Dnata ground-services unit.
Long an important stop on the trade routes between Europe and Asia, the United Arab Emirates is a key point on aviation’s new Silk Road. With no snow to shovel off runways and no unions to strike–and within an eight-hour flight from two-thirds of the world’s population–Dubai has swiftly become a perfect air link. And that’s allowed government-owned Emirates Airlines, along with other Gulf carriers such as Qatar and Etihad, to shave off huge amounts of traffic from Singapore Airlines Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific. Today East Asia, Australia and New Zealand is Emirates’ biggest market, making up 29% of the airline’s revenue last year.

Last year Dubai International handled 66.4 million passengers, and it expects 75 million in 2015. (photo: Patrick Castillo, Emarat Al Youm/AP)

“In terms of charter traffic, 25% of Australia-to-Europe traffic has shifted from Hong Kong and Singapore to Dubai in the last couple of years,” says Daniel Tsang of Hong Kong consultancy Aspire Aviation. Adds Jon Conway, Dnata’s senior vice president of Dubai airport operations: “I used to work in Hong Kong, and we thought we were pretty well placed geographically for all the China traffic, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia. But Dubai is just such a convenient location.”
Indeed, the traditional linchpin of any international route system–the North America-Europe route–is being usurped by the overland route to Asia, a route that now usually goes through Dubai. “In the last ten years in aviation global business has shifted from being transatlantic to stretching toward Asia,” says Andrew Charlton, the Australian chief executive of Swiss consultancy Aviation Advocacy. “Any person who can link a country with Asia is in a better place than someone who can’t.”