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Team confirmed for Al-Maktoum airport design

5 September 2024

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A team comprising Austria's Coop Himmelb(l)au and Lebanon's Dar Al-Handasah has been confirmed as the lead master planning and design consultants on the expansion of Dubai's Al-Maktoum International airport.

Dubai approved the updated designs and timelines for its largest construction project in April.

Covering an area of 70 square kilometres in the south of Dubai, the airport will have five parallel runways and five terminal buildings with a total of 400 aircraft gates. It will be five times the size of the existing Dubai International airport and have the world’s largest passenger handling capacity of 260 million passengers a year. For cargo, it will have the capacity to handle 12 million tonnes a year.

The construction works on the first phase of the project are expected to be completed by 2032.

The government of Dubai said that the plan is for all operations from Dubai International airport to be transferred to Al-Maktoum International airport within 10 years.

The government statement added that the project will create housing demand for 1 million people around the airport.

Project history

The expansion of Al-Maktoum International airport is a long-standing project. Also known as Dubai World Central (DWC), it was officially launched in 2014, with a different design to the one approved in April 2024. Back then, it involved building the biggest airport in the world by 2050, with the capacity to handle 255 million passengers a year.

An initial phase, due to be completed in 2030, involved increasing the airport’s capacity to 130 million passengers a year. The development was to cover an area of 56 square kilometres.

Progress on the project slipped as the region grappled with the impact of lower oil prices and Dubai focused on developing the Expo 2020 site. Tendering for work on the project then stalled with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.

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Yasir Iqbal

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