Abu Dhabi: Dubai International Airport (DXB), the world’s busiest for international travel, has been made operational on Wednesday after the completion of the 45-day refurbishment programme, Dubai Airport said.
The northern runway was closed from May 9 to June 22 to carry out “complete refurbishment”.
The opening of the new runway culminated with the take-off and landing of the first flight in the afternoon on Wednesday, June 22.
The airport’s Twitter account on Wednesday celebrated the completion of the project by posting pictures of the first flight to take off from the runway after its reopening.
“And that’s a wrap! The Northern Runway Rehabilitation programme is now complete and DXB is back to a dual-runway operation,” the airport tweeted.
While the runway work was under way, the emirate’s second airport, Dubai World Central (DWC), handled more than 1,000 flights from several international airlines, including flydubai, SpiceJet, Indigo, Gulf Air, Air India Express and Qatar Airways.
The runway last underwent such extensive repairs in 2014, while the southern runway was similarly refurbished in 2019.
“As we saw in 2019, runway enhancement programmes continue to support the long-term vision for Dubai as it reinforces its position as one of the world’s leading aviation hubs,” FlyDubai’s chief executive Ghaith Al Ghaith said.
Meanwhile, passenger traffic at Dubai International is expected to surge this summer, as some 2.4 million travellers are expected to pass through DXB between June 24 and July 4.
July 2 is expected to be the busiest day, with daily traffic exceeding 235,000 passengers. Similar passenger numbers are anticipated at the airport over the Eid Al Adha weekend of July 8 and 9.
Flydubai also expects three million passengers to travel across its network this summer.
Dubai-based carrier Emirates too has said that over 550,000 customers are expected to fly out from the UAE between June and July on over its 2,400 weekly network-wide flights.
