A change in UAE regulations offering Russian visitors visas on arrival propelled traffic upward at Dubai World Central to more than 900,000 passengers in 2017.

DWC welcomed 904,940 passengers during 2017 compared to 850,633 passengers recorded in 2016, a robust growth of 6.4 per cent.

The annual figures were boosted mainly by a surge in traffic on eastern European routes which recorded a spike of 168 per cent to take the total number of passengers during the year to 452,631.

Spurred by the change last year in visa regulations that offer visa on arrival to Russian visitors, Russia emerged as the single largest contributor to traffic from the region, with a growth of 955.4 per cent totalling 279,100 passengers in 2017.

Western Europe also recorded a surge in traffic with passenger numbers reaching 94,452 (up 34.6 per cent).

Germany was the single largest contributor in the region with 41,671 passengers, propelled by the launch of service by Condor and their partners FTI Group and Meeting Point International that connects DWC with multiple cities across Germany including Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Leipzig, Hannover, Cologne, Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart, as well as Basel in Switzerland.

“DWC’s performance this year was very satisfying both in terms of passenger numbers as well as cargo volumes.

“The airport is gaining popularity among airlines operating point to point routes, thanks to the unique advantages of convenience, quick turnaround times, and cost efficiency that DWC offers to carriers and passengers.

“DWC will have much more to offer to our airline partners and customers in 2018 as the project to expand the capacity of the passenger terminal building from five million to 26 million passengers per annum is nearing completion,” said Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports.

Dubai International

Dubai Airports also recently announced the successful completion of the world’s first tier three certified Modular Data Centre Complex at Dubai International.

The project was led by Dubai Airports and delivered by Huawei, a leader in the field, in just over 400 days to coincide with UAE’s month of innovation being observed during February.

The complex is equipped with next generation technologies to ensure the highest levels of availability, maintainability, resilience and seamless business continuity to support DXB’s growing and complex operation.

Dubai Airports worked closely with Huawei to design and build the tier three pre-fabricated data centre incorporating smart operations and intelligent management platforms to host critical IT systems.

The new facility will provide a stable and reliable environment for Dubai Airports to host its private cloud.

The DXB data centre is the first of two planned modular facilities that Huawei will build for Dubai Airports.

Together, they will operate as a pair of mirrored tier three data centres interconnected through a dedicated fibre optic link that will provide high-level resilience and availability to support the critical operations of Dubai Airports. 

The timeline for the second facility has yet to be finalised.

“With over 240,000 passengers and 1,100 flights per day, zero downtime and hundreds of internal and external systems to manage, high reliability and resilience are critical requirements for Dubai Airports’ business technology infrastructure,” said Michael Ibbitson, executive vice president, Dubai Airports.

“This centre boosts our operational efficiency and powers our ability to grow, innovate and enhance the customer experience.”