Dubai Airports, CEO, Paul Griffiths at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Asia 2024

Transcript

Paul Griffiths:Well, we've had an amazingly robust recovery, and we've actually exceeded our pre-COVID numbers by quite a margin. This year, we've had to revise our forecasts upwards several times, and we now forecast to end the year at around the 93 million passenger mark, which will actually be a record for us, which seals our position as the world's busiest international airport, and actually the second overall, only to Atlanta, in terms of overall traffic. So a very satisfactory position. But also, our passenger service scores have been climbing, and we now, I think, can claim we're not just the busiest, but also the best on several measures. I think our trade secret is we've recognized that actually it's not just about the size of the airport, it's the way you manage the flow. And what we've done is separated the airport into 2 zones. One zone is for flow, the other zone is for dwell. And the idea, if you can actually double the number of people through the same level of infrastructure by halving the time in which they go through the airport process, you've got double the So that's a particularly good thing, and people value the fact that we've handed their time back to them. And I don't think anyone really wants to spend more time at an airport waiting in line, going through process. So we've re-engineered as much as we can and will continue to do so to ensure that we're incredibly efficient. And by being efficient, you can increase capacity without increasing all the pinch points and the pain of busy airports. I think innovation really is all about what you take out rather than what you put in. And what we're trying to do is converge a lot of the legacy processes that exist in the aviation industry to make absolutely sure we're only asking our customers to do whatever we're asking them to do just one time. And if we can ask those questions and clarify what response and information we need from our customers, off airport, then it makes the on-airport experience so much more pleasant because all the formalities have been taken care of. Well, we've probably got about another $15 to $20 million that we can add at DXB. That'll probably see us through for the next 10 years. But beyond that, of course, if we need to expand, which obviously the city does, there's a program called D33, which is aiming to double GDP. By 2033. So if we are going to serve that plan, we clearly need more airport capacity. So this is the right time. It's going to be a fast-track approach. It's going to have so many innovations in terms of technology and services to make the airport seem intimate, yet obviously to have 260 million capacity in the ultimate phase. So that transition is something that's incredibly exciting. A big challenge for us, but we're very confident of making it work. I think it most definitely is, and I'm really pleased that we've taken this decision ahead of time whilst we've still got the capacity to grow at DXB, which means we won't have a lengthy period where we would be ex-growth without that capacity coming on stream. It's a great opportunity to actually embed huge advances which are being made in technology to make the airport experience so much better than we see today. DXB is going to be the testbed, but the full application of all the technology we introduce into the airport, particularly on the passenger service side, will be fully implemented and rolled out at DWC. It's going to be great.

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