If there is one city in the world that is constantly changing and always ready to achieve world records, it is without a doubt Dubai: here there is the highest infinity pool in the world, but also the largest permanent vertical labyrinth on the planet, and then again the tallest skyscraper on the entire globe. And these, needless to say, are just some of the records of this vibrant reality. In fact, there are so many records and soon another particularly interesting one will be added: one of Dubai’s airports will become the largest on the planet.
Dubai’s Al Maktoum Airport
L‘Al Maktoum Airportalso called Dubai World Central, it is currently the second in the city but will soon become the main and also the largest in the world. Located in Jebel Ali, 37 km southwest of Dubai, it was inaugurated on 27 June 2010 in what is a truly surprising position: it stands in the middle of the desert.
It is an imposing structure named after Sheikh Muḥammad b. Rāshid Āl Maktūm, Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates since 2006, which is part of the future Dubai South, a large economic, residential and logistics center currently under construction.
Because it will become the largest in the world
Al Maktoum airport is therefore destined to become the first in the country and, most likely, also the largest airport in the world: just think that according to estimates it will be able to accommodate 260 million passengers. The reason why it was decided to focus on this structure is very simple: the dizzying increase in passengers that Dubai has recorded has once again raised the problem of the capacity of the current Dubai’s main airport which, being practically a city airport as it is located a few kilometers away from Burj Khalifa it is absolutely unable to significantly increase the volume of passengers it can accommodate.
Al Maktoum International, for its part, is located in a much less urbanized area of the city, consequently offering further possibilities for expansion.
The United Arab Emirates they are therefore ready to invest 34 billion dollars in its expansion, until it becomes well five times larger of the current main airport, Dubai International Airport, which last year was the first to exceed 87 million passengers worldwide.
According to what was announced by the governor of Dubai, Mohamed bin Rashid, the new Al Maktoum will contain “400 boarding gates and will have five parallel runways” (currently it only has two). For this reason, the activities of Dubai International Airport will all be transferred to Al Maktoum in the coming years.
But it didn’t end there, because the governor even anticipated the construction of “an entire city around the airport, in the south of Dubai”, which will be able to accommodate up to one million people.
According to forecasts, Al Maktoum will be the most important airport in the world in terms of size and flow of guests by 2050. All that remains is to wait for further developments to try to understand if, this time too, Dubai will be able to set another world record.