Dubai International (DXB) has retained its position as the Middle East’s best-connected international airport, according to a report by air travel intelligence company OAG.

Its Megahubs 2022 report analysed flight data for the top 100 largest airports for capacity and top 100 largest airports for international capacity (based on total scheduled seats September 2021 to August 2022).

It found that at DXB, Emirates accounted for 49 per cent of the share of flights. At the next best-connected international airport in the Middle East – King Khalid International airport in Riyadh (RUH) – Saudi Arabia Airlines accounted for 51 per cent of all the flights at the airport.

The report also placed DXB at number 18 in the Top 25 Low-Cost Megahubs, with Riyadh’s RUH airport being the only other Middle East entry on the list t number 25.

Furthermore, OAG has stated that within the top 10 busiest global international routes, Dubai featured in five of them (by number of seats). The DXB-RUH route has 3,191,090 seats at second position, the DXB-LHR had 2,697,593 seats at number four on the list, followed by the DXB-JED route which has 2,425,930 seats at number six, and BOM-DXB with 1,977,537 seats at number eight followed by DEL-DXB at number ten with 1,898,749 seats.

Dubai Airports had in November last year increased its annual forecast for passenger traffic at DXB to 64.3 million passengers.

Over the eight days starting December 27, nearly 2 million passengers were expected to pass through DXB, with average daily traffic reaching 245,000 passengers. The day of January 2 was expected to be the busiest day with traffic exceeding 257,000 passengers.

A total of 23,672,468 arrivals were recorded in Dubai in 2022 through all of its ports. The numbers shared by the Dubai Media Office confirmed that there was an 89 per cent increase in incoming passenger traffic traffic last year, compared to 2021.

oag.com