Dubai International Airport (DXB) will close its southern runway this week for maintenance work, but the airport and Emirates Airline say they are well prepared for the 45-day closure.
Work on the runway, one of two at DXB, will begin April 14 and is scheduled to run through May 30.
Emirates said it had been planning for the shutdown for 14 months and was focused on maintaining on-time performance. There will be a 25% reduction in the number of Emirates flights during the maintenance period.
“We’re confident we are fully prepared and good to go for April 16,” Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths said. The main visible difference for passengers will be a potential change in airports, although scheduling experts have optimized DXB’s one runway operation to the point where there will be only a 29% reduction in the number of available seats.”
Additional capacity will be provided by Dubai World Central (DWC). The number of flights across the Dubai Airport system will see a reduction of 19% and a seat reduction of 20%.
DWC will take on additional traffic from affected airlines and handle an average of 145 passenger flights per day by airlines that flydubai, Wizz Air, Aeroflot, Indigo, SpiceJet, Gulf Air, Ukraine International Airlines, Ural Airlines, Nepal Airlines, Kuwait Airways and flynas.
Source:ATW