Dubai International Airport Freight Traffic Down 23.2% YoY

Dubai International Airport (DXB) has made good progress in its recovery from a difficult year. Official data on annual freight traffic during the pandemic showed a noticeable positive trend in the second half of 2020.

According to statistics, the annual volume of DXB air traffic reached almost 2 million tons, which indicates a drop of 23.2% compared to pre-crisis times. At the same time, in the fourth quarter, Dubai Airport handled more than a quarter of the total annual cargo traffic (571,718 tons of cargo). This means that, compared to the same period in 2019, freight traffic decreased by only 13.3%.

The IL-76 cargo aircraft of ZetAvia carry out charter flights to the countries of the Middle East, Europe and Africa and are capable of carrying up to 50 tons of cargo each.

The restoration of the airport's cargo flow is gaining momentum, however, with passenger traffic, everything is not so rosy so far. For the year, DXB's passenger traffic fell 70% to 25.9 million passengers. DXB handled 49,603 flights in the fourth quarter (-49.8%), bringing the annual flight traffic to 183,993 (-51.4%), while the average number of passengers per flight decreased by 20.3% per year.

Oleg Sergeev