- Dubai wants to build a $35 billion airport with 400 gates and five runways in the next 10 years.
- The emirate says the facility’s capacity will hit 260 million passengers, the most in the world by far.
- It’s the centerpiece of the ambitious Dubai South, the emirate’s planned city of 1 million people.
Dubai is undertaking a massive expansion of an airport that it plans to be five times the size of its current international hub.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the emirate’s ruler, said the upgraded Al Maktoum International Airport will feature a capacity of 260 million passengers, the world’s largest.
“We are building a new project for future generations, ensuring continuous and stable development for our children and their children in turn,” Sheikh Mohammed wrote in a post on X. “Dubai will be the world’s airport, its port, its urban hub, and its new global center.”
By comparison, the world’s busiest airport in 2023, the Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, saw 104.6 million passengers that year.
Most international flights now operate out of Dubai International Airport, which some 87 million passengers visited in 2023.
But all operations there will be moved to the Al Maktoum facility, which is expected to host five parallel runways and 400 aircraft gates, Sheikh Mohammed said.
He put the 10-year construction cost at AED 128 billion, or $35 billion, and said the emirate would build “an entire city around the airport” with anticipated housing demands for 1 million people.
The Al Maktoum International Airport, also known as Dubai World Central, was opened in 2010 with one terminal. Like the Dubai International Airport, it has two runways but is used significantly less.
The airport is designed as the centerpiece for Dubai South, a planned economic zone that aims to host a million residents and provide 500,000 jobs across a 55-square-mile area.
The announcement comes as air travel in Dubai returned to pre-pandemic levels, with 17.15 million international overnight visitors in 2023.
