Dubai International Airport (DXB), the world’s busiest air travel hub, attracted a record 46 million passengers in the first six months of 2025, up 2.3 per cent from a year earlier, as recent travel disruptions due to conflict in the Middle East proved short-lived, it said on Tuesday.

Many airline services remain disrupted in the Middle East following last month’s 12-day air war between Iran and Israel that ended with a US-brokered ceasefire. However, Paul Griffiths, CEO of DXB’s owner Dubai Airports said overall travel at Dubai airport has “recovered very quickly”.

“We were quite positively surprised that the disruption we saw was so short-lived… Our passenger base continues to be strong,” Griffiths told Reuters in an interview.

He forecast that DXB would handle 96 million passengers this year, up from a record 92 million last year, and 100 million passengers in 2026.

The airport is the main base for the Middle East’s biggest airline Emirates and its budget carrier flydubai and is also used by other major airlines.

SIGNS OF SATURATION

Griffiths said he anticipates annual traffic at DXB to grow to 115 million passengers by 2032, when a $35 billion terminal at Dubai’s other airport, Al Maktoum International (DWC), will open.

State-controlled Dubai Airports owns both airports and plans to make DWC the city’s principal airport in 2032, shifting the majority of DXB’s operations there.

DWC is expected to be the largest airport in the world, five times the size of DXB, with a capacity of up to 260 million passengers by 2032.

“As time goes on, clearly the saturation of capacity at DXB will continue to increase,” Griffiths said, noting that as slots for airlines narrow at DXB, DWC is seeing growth, with a 36.4 per cent spike in passenger traffic in the first half.

Asked about plans for a potential bourse listing of Dubai Airports, Griffiths said that while airports worldwide “make attractive subjects for IPOs” and the company has been ready “for quite a long time,” a decision would have to come from the Dubai government, which owns the firm.