India’s airport expansion plans need revised seat agreements: Dubai airport CEO

Paul Griffiths, CEO or airports of Dubai. Photo: Media.dubaiairports.Ae

The development of the airport infrastructure in India and the fulfillment of India’s ambitions to turn them into centers that can transfer to passengers from different connection points must be supported by a review in the capabilities of the allowed seats between. Two countries.

“The development of airport infrastructure in India will obviously be welcome because there will be many more points where it will be possible to have a direct service to the EAU, partly to Dubai The Hindu In the lateral lines of an international event of the Airport Council.

I was addressing a question about the center’s efforts to develop Indian airports such as centers to reduce traffic leakage to the main international airports.

The center plans to occupy 50 airport development projects in the next five years. These include new airports, as well as the expansion of existing ones.

Additional seats

The EAU have been pressing for 50,000 additional weekly seats for Dubai in the Bilateral Air Service Agreement. It currently allows 66,000 seats per week between the EAU and India, a quota fully used by the airlines on both sides. The proposal includes an assignment formula of 4: 1 seats, which allows Indian carriers to operate four additional seats for each additional seat granted to the US airlines. This relationship would gradually change to 3: 1, 2: 1 and any 1: 1 in a specific period, decreasing changes systematically.

Narrow plane

Mr. Griffith also believes that the world is moving away from a concentration approach to develop airports, since the evolution of aircraft technology has allowed the narrowest airplanes to connect remote airports in a profitable way. The capacities will be less compared to the number of smaller aircraft capable of flying long distances.

The second EAU airport: Dubai World Central (DWC), or to the Al Maktoum airport, will replace the Dubai International Airport (DXB) as its main center in the mid -2030s. An expansion of $ 35 billion, approved in April 2024, is aimed at 260 million passengers annually by 2050 with five tracks, 400 doors and eight competitions. When it opens after phase one of expansion in 2027, it will have three clues, almost 120 doors and a A150 million passenger capacity.

Terminals based on topics

Mr. Griffiths said that DWC could be different terminals based on country issues such as India or America. This would imply a terminal for airlines with the same destinations. Then, an Indian thematic terminal “would not only mean Indian airlines, but will group flights [of different airlines] In the most effective ways, the clues are optimized, as we would do because to minimize the distances to walk. “Similarly, there could be terminals from Europe and Australasia.

In 2024, Dubai, the most busy travel center in the world registered a total of 9.2 passengers of millions of rupees or 1.2 million rupees traveled to India. 55% of airport users visited Dubai as a final destination, while 45% used it as a connection concentrator.