World's first dedicated A380 concourse opens at Dubai

[sn26567]

Dubai's Emirates Airlines began operations on Wednesday from the world's first concourse dedicated to Airbus A380s at the Gulf emirate's rapidly expanding airport.

Concourse A gives Emirates an additional airport capacity of 15 million passengers a year, the company said.

The expansion takes place as the CAPA Centre for Aviation said Emirates could become this year the world's second-biggest carrier in terms of capacity, right after United Airlines, and way ahead of legacy European carriers.

The new extension to Terminal 3, featuring 20 gates specifically designed to accommodate the long-haul planes, will open gradually, with just four gates operational on Wednesday.

The government-owned carrier is the largest operator of A380s, with a fleet of 31 and another 59 on order.

The new facility will be available to A380 flights to Europe operated by Qantas, as per the global partnership announced recently and awaiting the final approval of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel- ... z2Gv18qnAb

[Biggles71]

With over 30 Airbus A380's flying and another 60 on order, Emirates airline is the worlds largest operator of the double-deck super jumbos.

To keep up with the vast expansion by its home carrier, Dubai airport has over the years built several new concourses. Until a few weeks ago the airport could theoretically cope with a maximum of 60 million passengers per year.

With an estimated (figures to be published end of Jan 2013) of more than 55 million passengers, Dubai will more than likely make it into the 2012 top 10 of the worlds busiest airports. It is already leaving large international airports like Amsterdam, New York JFK, San Francisco and Singapore well behind. Quite an achievement given Dubai DXB airport has only 2 runways and has a limited amount of space for expansion.

A few days into the new year, the brand new Concourse A (part of Terminal 3) was officially opened. This should eventually increase the airports capacity to 75 million per year! With 20 extra boarding gates feeding directly into the upper and main decks of the super jumbos, Concourse A is the worlds first dedicated A380 terminal. This brings the total number of A380 gates at Dubai airport to 27.

I got to try out the Concourse A experience last week when coming back from Paris CDG; an uneventful arrival including a short Skytrain ride into Concourse B, and one was back onto familiar ground.

For more please check out my blog at: http://bjornmoerman.blogspot.com/2013/0 ... dubai.html

[dna]

Qantas will also be using the new terminal when it switches its hub from Singapore to Dubai in March.

[Conti764]

How are the works at Al Makthoum (forget probably mistakes in writing) International Airport? Before the crisis had hit Dubai as well, opening was foreseen somewhere in the next years (2015?) Will every development of DXB be obsolote then?

On a personal note, crazy how they were developing and building in the UAE. Finally some common sense has started to grow with the sjeiks with some major projects on hold...