The number of passengers at the new Dubai airport in 2017 exceeded 900 thousand thanks to the introduction of a visa on arrival for Russian tourists.
The change in the UAE visa rules, according to which Russian citizens can now obtain a visa upon arrival, increased passenger traffic at Dubai's new airport - Dubai World Central (DWC) - by 6 percent to 905 thousand people in 2017. In 2016, a similar indicator amounted to 850.6 thousand people, according to reports of the operator of Dubai airports.
The increase is largely due to an increase in passenger traffic on Eastern European routes (168 percent). Russia has become the largest outgoing market - the growth in the number of passengers amounted to 955 percent. In total, 279 thousand Russians took advantage of DWC.
A 35% increase in passenger traffic was also recorded by Western Europe with the largest number of guests from Germany (41.6 thousand people).
The airlines that contributed to the growth throughout the year were Wizz Air, Azur Air, Royal Flight, Condor and Ural Airlines.
DWC also recorded a 6 percent increase in freight traffic in the fourth quarter - 267.5 thousand tons, compared with 252.3 thousand tons for the same period in 2016.
Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths noted high performance and recalled the project to increase the passenger terminal throughput from 5 to 26 million passengers per year.
