Dubai Airport passenger numbers surpass pre-pandemic levels

Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths predicts strong recovery in 2022

According to Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths, Dubai International Airport (DXB) is currently experiencing pre-Covid numbers in terms of visitation.

In an interview with CNN’s Richard Quest, Griffiths said: ““On a point-to-point basis, visitors through the airport at 111% of what they were pre-Covid.”

Griffiths added: “I think the pessimism of the uncertainty that we’ve been facing has to give way to the opportunistic and optimism of recovery… and the good thing is, we never really shut anything down. We put things into hibernation, but we maintained a full state of readiness in order to be able to springboard back into the real world when traffic starts to recover.”

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Griffiths also commented on whether he thought Covid testing at airports would continue saying: “Once the testing regime becomes history, which I think it will do shortly, we believe there will be a very strong recovery. And we need governments to stop interfering with the common-sense health regulations that are now emerging in the wake of the response to the latest strains of the virus.”

In September last year, Griffiths had forecasted that the number of international visitors could more than double in 2022 as the easing of Covid-19 restrictions boosts travel through one of the world’s busiest hubs.

According to aviation analyst Official Airline Guide (OAG), Dubai International (DXB) remained the world’s busiest international airport in December 2021, measured by international seat capacity.