Abu Dhabi Airport Handles 2 Million Passengers Monthly In Q3

Abu Dhabi International Airport has handled over two million passengers in each of the three months of July, August and September, as the capital city becomes important travel hub in the region.

"September was another very busy month for the Abu Dhabi International Airport and the third consecutive month in which ADIA welcomed over two million passengers," said Engr. Ahmad Al Haddabi, chief operations officer at Abu Dhabi Airports.

He said: "2015 has been a big growth year for us."

The passenger handling continued to grow strongly with 18 per cent more passengers used the airport in the first nine-months for their travel, he said. In the first nine months of the year, Abu Dhabi's airport handled 17.4 million passengers, showing the growing role of the capital in the region as a travel destination.

The top ten busiest routes months of 2015 included the UK, USA, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Qatar, Thailand and Germany.

Total aircraft traffic was also up 14.3 per cent in the first three quarters of the year, in which Abu Dhabi successfully facilitated 129,703 aircraft movements.

Ahmad Al Haddabi said "Increased global connectivity continues to be an important contributor to airport's overall success."

"We are seeing a dramatic boost in demand across the vast majority of destinations served from Abu Dhabi," he said.

Year-to-date growth on specific routes included a 44 per cent increase in passengers travelling between Abu Dhabi and the USA, a 27.3 per cent surge in traffic to and from Australia, and 24.8 per cent and 17.2 per cent rise on flights between the UK and Germany respectively.

The airport moved 621,191 metric tonnes of cargo during the first nine months of the year, with overall cargo traffic up 7.2 per cent.

Abu Dhabi's new airport project, a multi-billion dollar mega development is in final phase of expansion which is designed to increase the overall capacity of the airport to more than 40 million passengers per year.

As part of this redevelopment, a second runway and a third terminal have been completed.