Has Dubai World Central’s time come at last? Or will it forever be a white elephant?
The word 'saga' has often been attached to airport construction projects in recent years.
For example Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which took over a decade to build; the new USD11 billion Mexico City Airport, which was abandoned after construction had begun; a similar situation in Nantes, France; the interminable delay to a third runway at London Heathrow, and to the greenfield Long Thanh Airport in Vietnam - and so it goes on.
Well up the table in that pantheon of avoidable disasters is Dubai's Al Maktoum Airport, also known as Dubai World Central (DWC).
Opened in 2010, and as an intended long term replacement for Dubai International Airport, it was envisaged that it would eventually handle up to 260 million passengers annually, and 12 million tonnes of freight.
As a cargo airport it has had some limited success, but its highest ever annual passenger total is a miserly 1.6 million.
But with Dubai International now worryingly close to capacity, Dubai World Airports is putting DWC under scrutiny again, while remaining non-committal about its intentions there.
There does seem to be a fairly simple answer…
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