24.11.05
Dubai will have the world's largest airport once the Jebel Ali International Airport is finished, at a cost of more than US$8bn, according to the Dubai government's Civil Aviation Department. The airport will feature a residential and commercial city and form part of the 140 square kilometre Jebel Ali Airport City (JAAC) development. The airport is due to be completed in phases, with the first aircraft due to land in the first quarter of 2007.
Heathrow in London is currently the world's biggest airport, handling 83.5 million passengers a year. However, Dubai's new airport will be ten times bigger than Dubai International Airport some 40 kilometres away, and the same size as Heathrow and Chicago's O'Hare airport put together.
Jebel Ali has its own seaport and is a free zone, legally a distinct entity from Dubai and offering companies operating there the possibility to be treated as being 'offshore' for tax purposes. This has already attracted hundreds of foreign companies.
The airport will have at least 6 parallel runways and 6 concourses, capable of handling more than 120 million passengers and more than 12 million tons of cargo a year. 'No airport has ever been built to this scale - or been served with infrastructure of this magnitude and sophistication. It will accommodate every aircraft type yet conceived,' Khalifa al-Zaffin, Dubai's Civil Aviation Director for Engineering and Projects, said.
