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Abu Dhabi Airport Posts 6.6pc Growth in Passenger Traffic

ABU DHABI - Passenger traffic at Abu Dhabi International Airport, or ADIA, grew by 6.6 per cent in May, as five new airlines began their operations.

Aircraft movements also rose by 9.4 per cent, while cargo recorded a 6.4 per cent growth over same month last year, Abu Dhabi Airports Company, or ADAC, said on Tuesday.

Passenger traffic for the year to date rose by 8.2 per cent, with 3,793,693 passengers handled through the airport during this period.

Contributing to the traffic growth is the recent airport extension and increase of services by Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa. Other factors included the arrival of new Serbian airline, Jat Airways, which recently started a twice weekly service between Abu Dhabi and Belgrade, and Etihad Airways adding Astana in Kazakhstan to its growing network of destinations.

London remained Abu Dhabi’s top busiest city destination for May, with a total of 37,620 passengers.

Doha was the second busiest, overtaking Bangkok, which took third place. Jeddah and Manila were the fourth and fifth busiest destinations respectively.

Traffic to and from India, Abu Dhabi Internationals’ largest single market, increased by 18.3 per cent, while Pakistan reclaimed its position as the airport’s second largest market with 9.9 per cent growth, from the third place in the previous month.

Australia, in a phenomenal 99.4 per cent increase in traffic due to improved connectivity with weekly flights to Sydney and the daily flights to Melbourne launched in April, became the airport’s sixth largest market.

Mohammed Al Bulooki, vice-president of Airline Marketing, attributed the growth to the robust infrastructure of the emirate of Abu Dhabi’s economy and favourable business climate, relative to today’s global 
economic climate.

“Our reach is growing in strong steady steps and keeping pace with the tremendous development of Abu Dhabi is making towards its ambitions as a centre for both business and leisure,” he said

He said that the growth signifies “continuing interest being shown in Abu Dhabi from the international business and leisure travelling communities, and qualified in terms by the five new airlines who have established their operations at Abu Dhabi International in 2009 alone.”

“Couple this with our existing partner airlines recognising a growing need to extend their Abu Dhabi services and routes; we are clearly continuing to look to the future with heart and are poised, locally, for what we see as the gradual, cyclical, and extended recovery across the industry and other world regions in the near future.” 


haseebhaider@khaleejtimes.com