Smaller, more fuel efficient planes will become more popular in the future resulting in more flights and better connectivity, according to the chief of Dubai airports Paul Griffiths. This is one of the reasons why the upcoming Al Maktoum airport will have a mammoth 400 gates.
Griffiths’ comments came during a session at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) on Tuesday where he said a lot of calculations had gone into designing the new Dh128-billion passenger terminal, which once completed will be one of the largest in the world.
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“Aircraft technology is rapidly changing,” he said. “A lot of aircrafts that come to us are narrow bodied, more fuel efficient, more capable planes. In the future, these planes will cause a plethora of regional airports to be directly connected to major hubs like Dubai. We will be connected to over 300 cities. In advance of that becoming a reality, it is necessary to create an airport with a number of gates to accommodate a much lower average capacity aircraft. We have done some very solid mathematical calculations on how many gates and runways we need.”
Griffiths elaborated that the growth was on track of what was expected. “If you extrapolate the growth, 17 years ago when I joined Dubai Airport, we had 30 million passengers,” he said. “Now we have 90 million passengers. If you go forward say another 15 or 20 years, we will reach the 260 million that the new airport is designed for.”
He said it was great foresight on the part of Dubai to plan for a new airport. “The decision is typical of the vision of the government of Dubai,” he said. “They know there is a need. This know that the DXB airport that we all know and love at some stage in the future will reach its absolute capacity. In the UK, the decision to expand Heathrow has been delayed by 15 years. Still there is no decision about it. Here, before we need it, a decision has been made for a clear way forward.
Sending cupcakes to Heathrow
Griffiths, who worked at Gatwick airport before coming to Dubai, shared about a time when he sent a box of cupcakes to his peers at Heathrow airport.
“It was over ten years ago when we had some cupcakes made which had on it Dubai No. 1 when we overtook Heathrow as the number one airport for international traffic,” he recalled. “I saved a box and sent it to the CEO of Heathrow airport. That was a very satisfying moment.”
He said that in Dubai, there was a one team mentality among his colleagues and that his biggest legacy was his team. “About 70 percent of my management team are Emiratis who are homegrown talent who were taken and trained here,” he said. “The growth is great but the ability to build an airport and make it so sufficient by nurturing local talent is the legacy I am most proud of. When I joined he had about 500 employees. Now, we have 1,700 employees.”