Dubai is to spend US$32bn expanding Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central (DWC), making it the world’s largest airport and increasing its ultimate capacity by 25%. Dubai Airports announced last month that its plan to expand the emirate’s second airport had been approved. The airport will be developed in two phases. The first will take between six and eight years to complete and the project will cover an area of 56 square kilometres. Currently, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways and Emirates Airlines f ly to Al Maktoum. Meanwhile, it was announced earlier this month that Dubai Airports and the aviation sector as a whole contributed US$26.7bn to the Dubai economy in 2013, which was almost 27% of Dubai’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). These figures were based on the latest report ‘Quantifying the Economic Impact of Aviation in Dubai’ conducted by global research firm, Oxford Economics, as a follow-up to a 2011 study done by the same firm. CAPTION The Al Maktoum International Airport in Jebel Ali, Dubai … set to be the largest in the world.
