I think this is good news.
The Times April 01, 2006
Dubai starts to circle on world's leading airports
By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
A PATCH of the Arabian desert is set to snatch Heathrow’s title as the world’s biggest airport. The six-runway Jebel Ali, in Dubai, will be able to handle twice as many passengers.
It is the biggest construction project in a city that plans to build the tallest building, and already has the largest shopping mall, biggest man-made harbour and first seven-star hotel.
With its oil due to run out in ten years, Dubai is transforming itself into the Middle East’s leading centre for tourism and trade. It has its eyes on the lucrative market in international transfer passengers changing aircraft en route to another country.
More than 23 million passengers landed last year at Heathrow without any intention of stopping in Britain. They put up with the airport’s notorious delays, circling in stacks for up to an hour, simply because it is the best-connected international hub. Dubai wants them to hop through the desert instead and is promising no delays and a seamless transfer between aircraft in as little as an hour.
While any expansion of Heathrow requires a ten-year planning process, Sheikh Mohammed al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, can simply draw lines in the sand and start issuing building contracts.
Jebel Ali’s French designers have linked taxiways to the end of each three-mile runway and aircraft will be able to loop back to terminals without waiting for other aircraft to land or take-off. Up to four aircraft will be able to land simultaneously.
Another advantage will be the absence of a noise curfew. Heathrow is limited to 16 flights between 11.30pm and 6am. Jebel Ali’s runways will operate around the clock, despite plans for 800 tower blocks housing 750,000 people within three miles of the runways. The airport will also be capable of handling 12 million tonnes of freight a year, double the capacity of Memphis, now the biggest cargo hub. The runways will be big enough for the Airbus A380 to land with up to 650 passengers when it enters service before the end of the year.
Emirates, Dubai’s national airline, has placed by far the biggest order for the A380, with the first nine of its forty-five arriving next year. The airline plans to double the size of its fleet by 2012.
Many of its new aircraft will serve airports in Britain, which supplies the largest number of foreign visitors to Dubai.
There are more than 110 flights a week between Britain and Dubai, with Virgin Atlantic starting services this week. Just under 700,000 Britons visited Dubai last year and the city believes the lure of cheap shopping, affordable luxury hotels and year-round hot weather will attract millions who now holiday in Spain or Greece.
The British are also the leading buyers of holiday homes on Palm-Jumeirah, a vast man-made reef in the shape of a palm that is being built off the coast. A quarter of the homes sold so far have been bought by Britons, including half the England football team. David Beckham, Michael Owen, Joe Cole, Gary Neville, Ashley Cole, Kieron Dyer and Wayne Bridge have all purchased villas on the “fronds” of the palm that curve out into the Gulf.
Other celebrities, including Michael Schumacher, have also been attracted by Dubai’s strict privacy laws that ban intrusive photography.
Another two palms, one twice the size and the other four times as big as Palm-Jumeirah, are being created. More than 50,000 people, including 12,500 Britons, have so far paid between £200,000 and £2 million for an apartment or villa on one of the palms.
Nakheel, Sheikh Mohammed’s company, which is building the palms, is also creating The World, a group of 300 artificial islands arranged in the shape of the Earth’s countries. Great Britain is on sale for £19 million, even though this buys only the freehold on a mound of compacted sand. The buyer will have to design and pay for the buildings and mooring, including installing the island’s own sewerage and power systems.
Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, said that the vast holiday home developments would help to maintain the city’s 16 per cent annual growth in air passengers. Each holiday home would generate dozens of trips a year because the owners would lend them or let them.
Despite most of the city resembling a gigantic building site, with cranes sprouting from hundreds of half-finished skyscrapers, Dubai attracted six million tourists last year.
The city’s 1.5 million residents, 80 per cent of whom are expatriates, are also among the most frequent flyers in the world.
Even the army of 250,000 migrant workers from India and Pakistan, who toil on the building sites through the 50C (122F) summer for £35 a week, usually get to fly home to see their families once every year or two.
Mohammed Ahli, the operations director of Dubai’s civil aviation department, said that Jebel Ali - to be ready for its first flights by September next year - and the city’s existing international airport would be linked by roads and high-speed rail to allow them to operate as a single entity.
“Together, they will have overtaken Heathrow in passenger numbers by 2011. The eventual capacity is 190 million, with 120 million at Jebel Ali and 70 million on the existing airport’s two runways.”