On the year’s busiest travel day, and the busiest travel day ever for Dubai’s airports, dnata stepped up and delivered a flawless experience for travellers from around the world.
The holiday travel season hit its peak on 19th December as more than 133,000 passengers, 150,000 bags and over 540 flights from around the world landed at Dubai’s airports. To ensure each passenger, flight and piece of luggage was handled properly, dnata had more than 4,400 staff working between the two hubs, and deployed over 7,000 vehicles airside, including baggage conveyor belts, passenger steps, pushback tractors, and baggage tractors.
dnata handles all flights and baggage at Dubai International (DXB) and Dubai World Central (DWC), as well as all passengers transiting though DWC and those accessing Terminals 1 and 2 at DXB. The integrated air services company helps passengers from more than 125 airlines, departing or arriving Dubai, or in transit en route to their final destination.
“Our teams have never dealt with so many passengers and bags on a single day and they handled the pressure really well,” said Nick Moore, dnata’s Senior Vice President, Airline Services. “I’m happy to say that they delivered a strong safe on-time performance and a smooth passenger experience at both airports—a considerable achievement given the busy schedules at the airports. It’s a result of teamwork and good planning involving all stakeholders at the airport.”
At DXB alone, dnata assisted 131,414 passengers and 149,449 bags get to their holiday destinations. This represents more than a 14% increase in the number of passengers using the airport during the same time last year. The dnata team successfully managed more than 1,000 aircraft movements at DXB. The most travelled sector from Dubai was Doha with over 4,000 passengers making the journey to the busy hub, and 4,400 bags meeting travellers at the destination.
“Dubai continues to grow as an international hub, and is expected to soon be the world’s busiest airport,” added Moore. “As the sole ground handler at the city’s airports, dnata is committed to working with the airport authority to ensure we are ready to support its expansion and the growth of aviation in the region.”
In addition to Dubai, dnata has ground handling operations in 20 other airports around the world, serving more than 250 airlines, and is the world’s largest ground handler of the Airbus A380 aircraft.
