[Anonymous]

[Swissdiver]

I am wondering why people consider Dubai airport as the best one in the Middle East. You walk like at FRA and wait for immigration like in Washington… A disaster… And T3 is not any better than T1… Can someone explain?

[BusinessTravellerMiddleEast]

Dear Swissdiver,
As we regularly travel around the region for the magazine, I would say it still sets the regional pace by virtue of its ongoing infrastructural investment, broad shopping/leisure facilities and modern technology (e-gate, electronic check-ins etc).
As with any major, fast-growing airport, there have been immigration challenges – did you arrive early morning? – but I know Dubai Airports is aware of them.
It’s always subjective of course, but I would say T3 is a spacious, well-thought-out facility as the large lifts bring you right up into the concourse and you don’t have as long to walk as with T1.
And how many airports would have the courage to turn their shopping concourse into a dancfloor?! (see ‘flash mob’ story in news this week). Dubai isn’t afraid to innovate – and rapidly taking shape now is Concourse 3 which will be dedicated to Emirates’ A380s..

[Danieljs]

From my last experience of DXB which was in January, we arrived in the early evening and the entire T3 was practically empty except for the staff who were standing around talking as they had nothing to do. Immigration was so quick that we had arrived to the baggage claim before any bags had even began to come out. The terminal was also very clean and spacious, much nicer than others such as SYD. However departing was a different story, we left mid morning from T3 and although bustling it was not over crowded. Check in was still efficient compared to the likes of JFK. However the flights can be slightly delayed due to the amount of planes trying to take off at once. But overall i would rank it highly over other main hubs for being so spacious and efficient.

[Swissdiver]

OK, I arrived at the worse hour at T3 this night (with 30 minutes delay so it was 0:30). That said I walked more than I ever walked at T1. Yes, T3 is spacious, but still an immigration queue is a queue. And there were a number of empty desks. Since it is peak hour at T3, this is hardly acceptable in the Middle East. As for the shopping argument, well I don’t, so…

To compare with similar sized airports (in term of number of passengers), we are far better of at HKG or AMS. And in the region, even CAI now is better managing immigration…

[Author]

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