Dubai is Building the Largest Airport on the Planet.

In 1959, the ruler of Dubai took a gamble. Against the counsel of his advisors, Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum ordered the construction of the fledgling emirate’s first proper airport.

At the time, Dubai was a nascent, freewheeling trading post in the Gulf—still under British mandate, while limping along over half a century after the collapse of its once-profitable pearling industry. Its future growth was far from certain.

A year later, the airport was up and running. It had just one terminal and one single runway made out of compacted sand—which had to be flattened before every single take-off or landing.

Today, some sixty-five years later, Dubai’s sprawling three-terminal airport—standing on the same site—is bursting at the seams. Dubai International, or DXB, is already the world’s second-busiest airport, and it’s only getting busier.

To redress this, bold, bold projects are underway. Projects which once complete, will make the mighty DXB look like that dusty strip of compacted sand from the sixties.

From Sand to Sky

From its humble beginnings, Dubai’s meteoric rise to global hub of tourism, finance and business has been nothing short of extraordinary; and Dubai International has mirrored its development every step of the way.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2000, the airport handled around 12 million passengers. By 2013, that figure had jumped to 66 million. 2024? 92.3 million.

Dubai isn’t just a major destination in its own right. Its strategic location makes it a crucial juncture between Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania. Two thirds of the world’s population live within an eight-hour flight from Dubai.

The airport already holds the title of the world’s busiest international hub, surpassing London Heathrow in 2013. Only Hartsfield-Jackson, in Atlanta, has more foot traffic, but, unlike Dubai, its passengers are mainly domestic.

Dubai International now serves about 106 airlines, connecting Dubai to 272 cities across 107 countries. Terminal 3, built to serve Emirates airline, is the world’s largest terminal by floor area, stretching over a staggering 1,713,000 square metres. When it opened in 2008, it was in fact the largest building in the world by floor space.

Since the 1980s, the airport has undergone a series of major expansions—with the gradual additions of terminals, concourses, runways and other major infrastructure. But at the dawn of the new millennium, Emirati officials had already identified the likely need for another airport, given DXB’s exponential rate of growth, and the serious strain it would eventually fall under.

Enter Al Maktoum International Airport, named after the ruling House of Dubai. Opened in 2010 in Dubai South—the city’s sparsely populated southwestern district—the site was initially built with cargo in mind. The first commercial flight landed in June of that year. Dubai International was oversaturated, after all, and air freight was booming in the Gulf.

At its launch, Al Maktoum was therefore designed to handle 12 million tonnes of cargo annually, placing the airport as the world’s largest in terms of freight capacity.

And then, in 2013, the new airport—featuring just one 4.5 km runway—officially opened its doors to passengers, servicing a handful of international airlines—mainly low-cost carriers—as well as private planes and charters. It did go on to serve as a good relief airport. The big test came in May 2014, when Dubai International closed one of its runways for repairs. A number of airlines migrated their operations to Al Maktoum for several months, and their new hosts certainly delivered—handling nearly 1 million passengers that year, while operations ran smoothly.

Still, the 1-million mark put it at near-full capacity. Meanwhile, DXB was feeling the logistical strain from exponential passenger increases each year, despite a designed capacity of 90 million—which it eventually surpassed in 2024. The two airports combined simply weren’t enough to sustainably meet Dubai’s demand for air travel.

Now, expanding Dubai International wasn’t an option. As it’s maxed out on the land it was allotted—wedged in between dense urban districts and major highways—there’s no room to grow. Slicing through neighbourhoods and vital infrastructure for future development is costly, logistically complex and politically delicate.

So, officials faced the choice. Keep stretching a saturated airport, maybe capping air traffic to Dubai. Or, start anew. Build bigger and better. There was only one clear option—one, which by now, shouldn’t surprise anybody when it comes to Dubai’s officials.

On the site of the cargo hub at Al Maktoum airport—one surrounded by vast tracts of desert land—they opted to build the largest airport the world has ever seen. By a landslide.

One single airport. Five times the size of Al Maktoum airport, currently. Capable of handling 260 million passengers a year.

Colossus

The vision for Al Maktoum International Airport is staggering. At full build-out, it will dwarf every other airport on earth.

Five parallel runways—each 4.5 kilometres long and 1.5 km apart—will allow four planes to arrive or depart at once. This, ladies and gentlemen, is unprecedented.

Other airports, like Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta or Chicago O’Hare operate five or more runways, but can only use two or three at once because of constraints related to spacing and wind-direction. In contrast, Al Maktoum will be able to handle over two hundred takeoffs and landings every hour at peak capacity, outperforming individual world airports, but even entire city systems of airports like New York and London.

The 4.5km length is also crucial given Dubai’s scorching climate. Hot air is thinner than cold air, meaning that in high temperatures, there is less lift under an aircraft’s wings at a given speed, compared with lower temperatures. The extra 1 to 1.5 km added onto the international average will ensure that even a fully loaded A380 can take off in forty-five-degree heat.

All runways will be outfitted with some of the most advanced aviation tech the world’s ever seen. Precision landing systems will allow planes to land safely even in sandstorms or heavy fog. Satellite-guided navigation and smart lighting will guide pilots right up to the gate. Meanwhile, ground radar and AI-powered control towers—the latter still under testing—will be able to track every single movement on the runway in real time.

The airport will boast a whopping total of 400 gates by the time it’s completed. That is more than double the number of Hartsfield-Jackson’s in Atlanta, and triple that of London Heathrow.

These gates will be spread across four enormous concourses—two to the East and two to the West—each concourse around 2.7 km in length, with a built-up area of 2.3 million square metres. For scale, that’s around 320 soccer pitches laid out side by side.

Since traipsing around the airport by foot would then be an unholy burden for most passengers, the airport will feature an underground ‘people mover’—essentially, an automated metro inside the airport. While plans are still under tender, we know it will shuttle passengers between 14 stations across the terminals and concourses, drastically cutting travel time inside the airport—and making Al Maktoum especially attractive for layovers.

Each of the four concourses will run along a central spine, 2.7 km in length, split into three vast atriums spanning multiple floors—reserved for departures and arrivals, special lounges, leisure and retail on steroids, and, of course, the underground stations for the people mover.

Topping each atrium will be giant roofs resembling sand dunes. These are a nod to the UAE’s geography and cultural heritage, but also have functional purposes. The airport’s layout centres around optimal use of natural light. This is an aesthetic plus, lending airiness, majesty and a welcoming, ecological touch to the travel hub, but it will also drastically reduce the need for artificial lighting.

The design, then, will be a balancing act of optimising natural light while reducing glare and heat intake. That will be in part thanks to the materials used—with emphasis on glazing, louvers, cladding and screens—but also on the roof’s curvature, and the concourses’ integral structure.

From the early design renderings by the architects, green spaces appear to abound both within and outside the airport’s walls. Travellers driving into the airport can likely expect vast artificial lakes, straddled by palm-studded oases. Inside the terminals and concourses, we’ll find mini-forests, tropical zones, and possibly vertical gardens, together with various kinds of soothing water features.

And since we’re discussing the elements, diligent wind analysis has been essential—for the best possible roof design, but also while planning the wider airport. Runways are being aligned northwest-southeast to match the region’s prevailing winds. This will reduce the risk of dangerous crosswinds during take-offs and landings. Unsurprisingly, the winds also carry significant volumes of sand and dust, hindering visibility and causing engine wear.

Planners are therefore accounting for this in the layout of the runways, the taxiway spacing, and of the terminals’ filtration systems.

Convenience Capital

Now for another big, bold promise for Al Maktoum: a hyper-sophisticated, absolutely trailblazing baggage service. One that’ll make Dubai’s current system—in itself a technological wonder—resemble a Temu marble run.

Starting with departing passengers. Rather than queuing at traditional check-in counters, officials plan to roll out self-drop-off points. A momentous innovation is that the airport will accept luggage days before departure. This is already in place with certain airlines at Dubai International, but it seems likely the system will be normalised for Al Maktoum.

It will, after all, be more than capable of handling the demand. Passengers will be able to drop off their luggage long before their departure—a welcome service for businesspeople and tourists alike—while hotel luggage pick-up will likely also be an option, as it is currently, albeit at a premium.

Each bag will be tagged electronically, before being shuttled on its way down an automated, high-speed conveyor network beneath the terminals. To give you a sense of scale: at full capacity, the system is expected to handle up to 50,000 bags an hour. Dubai International’s current system, the biggest and best in the world, maxes out at around 16,000.

First, the bags are whizzed through several stages of security screening. X-rays and CT scanners will detect any irregularities nearly instantly, sending suspicious luggage to a separate inspection area. Once cleared, bags are sorted based on flight number, gate and departure time; if they’re not ready to go, they stay in the central sorting network, either doing rounds on the conveyer, or remaining stationary in parking zones.

If they are due for imminent departure, they get shuttled off to their designated gate, and, through vertical lifts and pop-up hatches, emerge right where the aircraft is parked, before being loaded onto the plane by means of short conveyer arms.

Now, the lift-and-hatch feature is absolutely pioneering. Practically all airports around the world rely on trucks to deliver luggage from the baggage outlets over to the aircraft. It appears Al Maktoum wants to rely almost exclusively on these pop-up hatches—to help decongest the tarmac from the trucks and drastically cut down on service times.

Notwithstanding, airport officials have confirmed that cutting-edge baggage tractors are under testing. The end goal is for these to be self-driving, moving along mapped routes, and capable of towing up to four luggage containers each. The latest models are currently running at 15 km per hour under human oversight. Now, these could be a temporary solution until the baggage system is fully operational, and services each and every gate.

Most likely, they will carry on being operational as a safety net in cases of maintenance works, systems malfunctions or particular journeys. Overall though, it seems Al Maktoum wants to rely on them as little as possible.

And as for arrivals—according to official targets anyway—the airport aims to have luggage ready for pick-up within about 15 minutes from the moment baggage offloading begins. That is, once the aircraft is fully stationary, the engines are off, and safety checks are completed.

Gone, then, will be the days of loitering around the luggage carousel staring vacuously while sad-looking, orphaned suitcases drift lap after lap on the conveyor. If they deliver on their promise, the luggage will most likely already be on the carousel before passengers even reach the baggage hall.

There’s even talk of moving beyond the traditional carousel entirely, using biometric kiosks where you scan your face or boarding pass—and your luggage pops up directly to you.

It’s a bold ambition. It’s also what you can expect from a futuristic hub like Dubai.

Handling tens of thousands of bags every hour will require near-perfect coordination and efficient maintenance teams when things go wrong. There’s little reason though—bar some kind of natural or man-made catastrophe—why planners and operators shouldn’t deliver.

And the same applies for the airport’s other key passenger systems. Dubai International is already a world leader in biometric technologies. Smart gates are already available for eligible and registered passengers. At these, you simply look up, remove any facial accessories—preferably in the reverse order—while the system, which includes cameras, and AI-powered biometric tech checks you, then lets you through.

And that’s for the plebs, as it were. For Business and First class fliers travelling with Emirates, the biometric red carpet is rolled out in full splendour. Quite literally. Travellers at Terminal 3 walk along a red-carpeted ‘tunnel’, where even more advanced biometric technologies scan people’s faces without them even needing to stop. The system can handle up to ten passengers in motion at once—and takes all of 14 seconds. No need to scan a boarding pass or a passport.

At Al Maktoum, we can expect this technology to become the default for all passengers. The journey from “curb to gate”, as officials put it, will be designed to be as frictionless as possible, with minimal to zero queuing or reliance on travel documents. Facial recognition will be integrated into check-in, security, customs and boarding. So at every single leg of the traditionally tedious airport journey, passengers will be recognised automatically, and breeze through the airport unhindered.

‘Aerotropolis’

This is what officials are cooking up inside Al Maktoum. But, now let’s see what they’re cooking up around it. As, if the airport is the heart and brain of this megaproject, encasing it will be the prodigious body fit for purpose.

Yes, the world’s largest hub for air travel will be the centrepiece of an entirely new city. As the airport’s surrounding area is so vast, Emirati officials have already begun development for ‘Dubai South’, a great new metropolitan area being dubbed an aerotropolis. Its aspirations are neatly encapsulated in its other name, confusingly enough: Dubai World International.

As Al Maktoum Airport will provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of people, the plan is for vast portions of these workers to actually live in Dubai South.

The incentives are already piling up. Brand new housing, which will be far more affordable relative to downtown Dubai; corporate and government sweeteners like housing allowances and rapid visa processes. And one of the main draws for many—slashed commute times.

Dubai’s main roads are notoriously congested, likewise for the arteries connecting Dubai to the neighbouring emirates of Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. And unlike the older districts of Dubai, where rapid expansion far outpaced capacity, the aerotropolis is being built from scratch, with efficient transport in mind, and urban planning based on more realistic projections.

Latest press releases boast being able to house one million people, providing a range of housing types, from worker accommodations to luxury villas. The city itself will be an economic powerhouse for Dubai, providing around half a million jobs. That of course includes the aviation and cargo sectors, but the vast majority will in fact be all across the many key industries already well-established in Dubai, whether it’s construction, tech, or hospitality.

The masterplan divides the area into eight themed districts. These will include, among others, the districts of Aviation, Logistics and Commerce, where related businesses and professionals will congregate based on their specialisation.

Another sector will be the urban pocket originally planned to host Dubai Expo 2020. The grounds of Expo City, as it’s now called, were reopened after the pandemic and showcased a panoply of cutting-edge designs in the fields of tech, architecture and engineering. Now, the site is being refashioned into a ‘smart city’—a hub for green tech, digital industries and other future-leaning businesses.

No surprise then that Dubai South is already taking off. Dubai South closed off 2024 with 415 new companies opening up for business, and office leasing booming by an average of 300% annually.

Connectivity will be another major selling point, as well as a significant economic booster. A key passenger station of the soon-to-launch Etihad Rail is already in planning stages, connecting the airport to the UAE’s government-backed rail network. It aims to interlink all seven emirates of the country and will be a game-changer for commuters, particularly from neighbouring Abu Dhabi or Sharjah.

More importantly perhaps, Etihad Rail will form the UAE’s segment of the historic Gulf Cooperation Council Railway. Once completed, it will connect, for the very first time, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE, by railway. It will be an unprecedented accelerant of regional integration for the Gulf states, revolutionising the flow of goods and people in the peninsula.

And there’s more. Dubai already has a good claim to being the world’s foremost cargo hub. It’s now doubling down. Just 20 or so kilometres from the airport lies Jebel Ali port, one of the world’s largest man-made harbours and the busiest port in the Middle East. Along with Al Maktoum International, it will be a cornerstone of what Dubai calls its ‘Logistics Corridor’, an area spanning 200 square km, which will scale up the flow of cargo between sea and sky—to volumes and speeds historically unmatched.

And thanks to the upcoming railway network, goods can flow between the emirates and the Gulf states, cementing Dubai’s place as an epicentre of global logistics—the trade and travel nexus of the globe. Al Maktoum International is, of course, at the very heart of it.

Raising the Giant

Phase 1 of the masterplan is already underway, officially signed off in April 2024 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the oft-dubbed Sheikh CEO of Dubai.

This act greenlit a whopping 35-billion dollar investment—on the first passenger terminal alone. At the helm are two key state-backed organisms: Dubai Aviation Engineering Projects, the agency handling the build, and Dubai Aviation City Corporation, in charge of the wider metropolis around the airport.

At the core of this first phase is the West Terminal Building, together with the first of the four future concourses, with its sweeping atriums, one hundred gates, and dune-like roofs. What’s more, the first new runways are already being carved into the sand, carefully spaced so that future phases can slot in the additional strips without disrupting operations.

The baggage system and automatic people mover—including four of its stations—will be built, as well the airport’s less glamorous—but no less vital organs, including energy centres, fire and rescue stations, ground-support roads, and maintenance yards.

All told, by the time Phase One wraps up around 2032, Al Maktoum International should be able to handle approximately 130 million passengers a year—already fifty percent more than Dubai International manages today.

Once that’s in place, the second phase can begin, with the construction of a second, identical concourse, built parallel to the first. The baggage system, power supply, road network and people mover will all be expanded accordingly, pushing capacity toward 150 million a year.

Then, for the third and final stage, which will crown Al Maktoum into the colossus Dubai has promised. Given the sheer scale of the project, full completion isn’t expected until way into the 2050s, if not later.

The two last concourses will be added, plus an East Terminal to mirror the West and balance passenger flows across the site. All five runways will be ready, allowing the airport to operate multiple simultaneous arrivals and departures without bottlenecks. The people mover will reach its final form—a fourteen-station network, and Al Maktoum will be plugged directly into Dubai’s own transport grid. This will be achieved with the potential building of an express metro named the Purple line—still unconfirmed—the extension of the existing Red Line—already stretched to Expo City—as well, of course, the upcoming Etihad Rail.

At full build-out, the numbers are astonishing: 260 million passenger capacity a year, close to four hundred contact gates, and more than 15 million tonnes of cargo. That’s 15 times more than what they’re handling currently. Even major hubs like Hong Kong and Shanghai handle only a fraction of that figure yearly.

So—where do things stand now, in late 2025? The design is locked in, enabling works have been greenlit, and contracts for the big systems are already out for tender. A billion-dirham deal has gone out for the second runway, with foundations and utilities already being laid out.

Bidders are also lining up for the automated train and baggage system, with awards expected by the end of the year. In the meantime, Dubai’s colossal ground-handling company—dnata—has initiated tests on the autonomous baggage tractors, trundling between aircraft and baggage halls on pre-set routes.

Some of you might be wondering—just what will happen to the existing juggernaut that is Dubai International? If it is operational, successful, and an infrastructural wonder in its own right, surely it would carry on as a secondary hub?

Well, apparently not. Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports told the press that the idea of splitting traffic between two mega-airports so close to one another simply doesn’t make sense, and would amount to a logistical headache. For one, it would force passengers and airlines to shuttle constantly between two locations, killing the efficiency that makes Dubai so attractive as a global stopover in the first place. And not just this—we’re also told that almost all assets at Dubai International will be close to the end of their operating life by the time Al Maktoum is ready after the first phase.

So, instead of juggling two airports indefinitely, Dubai is going all-in on one: the largest airport in the world, purpose-built to anchor the city’s future as a global hub. And, quoting Griffiths, it will be “more than sufficient” to absorb all of Dubai’s aviation demands and pressures, handling every single one of the emirate’s commercial flights for decades to come.

When the time comes to shift Emirates airline and the rest of Dubai’s aviation operations over from Dubai International, officials say it could happen in as little as three days. That is, moving one of the world’s busiest airlines—including aircraft, staff, logistics and passengers—in a single weekend.

This won’t just mark the end of an era for Dubai International: it is a turning point for Dubai itself. That airport helped catapult the city into a global crossroads, putting this futuristic melting pot slash grind-and-play-ground on the map. Now, Al Maktoum is set to take that legacy further, consolidating Dubai’s power and opening a new phase in its trajectory.

The port of entry that opened up Dubai to the world will continue the tradition, but on a new scale reflecting the city’s aspirations. One mega-airport, with a full-scale city to buttress it, built to handle the future of air travel on a scale the world has never seen.

Key Takeaways

• Dubai’s first airport, built in 1959, has evolved into Dubai International, now the world’s second-busiest airport.
• Al Maktoum International Airport is being constructed to handle 260 million passengers annually, making it the largest airport globally.
• The new airport features five parallel runways, advanced aviation technology, and a sophisticated baggage handling system.
• Dubai South, an aerotropolis surrounding Al Maktoum, aims to house one million people and provide half a million jobs.
• The transition from Dubai International to Al Maktoum is planned to occur in just three days.

Sources

• Original MegaProjects video: Dubai is Building the Largest Airport on the Planet.
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• https://www.rosauae.com/metro-map/?utm.com
• Hero image source by Salgo60 / openverse, cc0.

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