Dubai International: From a Sand Runway to the World's Busiest Hub

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Civil aviation in Dubai began in 1937, when Imperial Airways rented a base for its Empire flying boats on the Horseshoe Route between Britain, Karachi, South Africa and Australia, for about 440 rupees a month including guards' wages. In 1959 Sheikh Rashid ordered a land airport, which opened in 1960 with an 1,800-meter runway of compacted sand that received Douglas DC-3s. An asphalt runway followed in May 1965, letting jets land. Through the 1970s and 1980s Dubai International (DXB) thrived as a refueling stop because airliners lacked the range to fly Europe to Southeast Asia nonstop and Soviet airspace was largely closed to Western carriers. Then the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and long-range aircraft like the Boeing 747-400, Airbus A340 and Boeing 777 could fly London to Singapore without stopping.

Dubai answered by building its own airlines, Emirates and later flydubai, to route traffic through the city. Terminal 2 opened in 1998 and Terminal 3, built exclusively for Emirates, fully opened in 2008 as the world's largest airport terminal and the fourth largest building on Earth by floor space. By 2014 the airport supported over 400,000 jobs and $26.7 billion, about 27 percent of Dubai's GDP. Traffic reached 92.3 million passengers in 2024 and 95.2 million in 2025. April 2024 floods submerged taxiways, and in late February 2026 Iranian airstrikes and drone attacks targeted Dubai, damaging the airport, injuring four people there, and suspending operations into March.

• Emirates handles about 51 percent of DXB passengers and 42 percent of aircraft movements.
• Dedicated A380 concourses let passengers board both decks at once, and baggage carousels run 90 meters long.
• Passenger traffic fell 31 percent in the second quarter of 2026 as the conflict disrupted Middle East air travel.
• DXB is hemmed in by the city and capped at about 115 million passengers a year.
• Dubai plans to close DXB and move operations to Al Maktoum International at Jebel Ali, open for cargo since 2010 and planned for 160 million passengers.