6.68m passengers fly through Dubai International in July

03/09/2015 06:13 AST

Dubai International handled 6.68 million passengers in July, a 29.6 per cent increase on the same month last year when airport capacity was cut due to the runway refurbishment.

Dubai International underwent a $1 billion runway refurbishment last year May to July that reduced the number of flights the airport could handle for 80 days.

A total of 6,682,676 passengers passed through the airport in July compared to 5,155,771 a year earlier, operator Dubai Airports said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. Over the first seven months of the year 44,981,967 passengers have used the airport, up 12.9 per cent compared to 39,831,861.

The major five countries in terms of passenger numbers in July were India, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Pakistan. The top destinations were London, Doha, Kuwait, Mumbai and Jeddah.

Eastern Europe was the fastest growing region, up 77.6 per cent, which Dubai Airports said was mainly due to flydubai’s new services to Slovakia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Croatia and Emirates’ service to Hungary.

The number of flights at the airport increased 35 per cent to 33,650 compared to 24,925. The number of flights in the first seven months of the year has risen to 231,081, up 18.8 per cent.

Freight volumes increase by 8 per cent to 205,526 compared to 190,376 in July last year. Over the first seven months of the year the amount of cargo handled at Dubai International has risen 2.7 per cent to 1,438,904.

Gulfnews