Dubai International’s Terminal 1 reopens for passengers

DXB’s Terminal 1 and concourse D have received passengers for the first time in 15 months

Terminal 1 and Concourse D at Dubai International (DXB) welcomed their first passengers in more than a year with the arrival of flynas flight XY201 from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Linked to Terminal 1 by an airport train, the $1.2bn Concourse D opened in February 2016 as the home terminal for DXB’s 65 plus international carriers. The reopening of the facility will see the phased return of these carriers from Terminals 2 and 3, as the hub prepares for an increase in traffic in the upcoming months. Before the pandemic, the terminal served more than 18 million passengers annually.

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The facilities were closed on 25 March 2020, following the partial suspension of operations at DXB as part of the measures to control the spread of Covid-19.

In an effort to improve the passenger experience, Dubai Airports recently introduced a fast-track passport control service that deploys face and iris-recognition technologies. This has reduced the time to complete passport control formalities to between five to nine seconds.

In addition, one of the world’s largest Covid-19 RT-PCR testing laboratories was recently opened at DXB. Located close to Terminal 2, the 20,000 square-foot laboratory is a dedicated facility for round-the-clock processing of RT-PCR test samples collected from passengers at the airport.