Dubai Airport could become a white elephant (white camel?)

Al Maktoum International Airport at Jebel Ali, the much heralded new gateway for Dubai, will not be opening for passenger traffic for a very long time.  This could be as distant as 2025, according to Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airlines, speaking at World Travel Market.  “At 41m passengers last year Dubai was the 15th busiest international airport in the world.  The current airport is still expanding.”

He said that the airport was investing US$3.5bn into a new Concourse 3, exclusively for handling Emirates Airline A380s.  This is expected to be completed by late 2012.  Although the target figure was 60m passengers per year the airport could handle up to 90m passengers.  Jebel Ali is supposed to have a limit of 120m.

Jebel Ali opened in June of this year, but only for cargo traffic. www.dubaiairport.com

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