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Dubai International Airport began 2026 with 8.7 million passengers in January, one of its busiest months ever. Weeks later, the airport that ended 2025 as the world’s busiest for international passengers was responding to ballistic missile alerts as the Iran war upended aviation across the Gulf.
“How many CEOs have you interviewed that have been subjected to direct ballistic attack from an enemy to your infrastructure?” Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths asked Fortune. He said DXB received roughly 111 separate alerts of ballistic activity during the crisis.
In the first six months of 2026, Dubai International Airport handled 31.5 million passengers, down 31.3% from the same period last year. Aircraft movements fell 32.1% to 150,600, while cargo volumes dropped 28.7% to 751,340 tons. That followed a record 95.2 million passengers in 2025, the highest annual international traffic ever recorded by an airport.
But Dubai Airports says the recovery is now gathering pace, with monthly passenger traffic rising from 3.5 million in April to 4.5 million in May and 5 million in June. Griffiths said overall traffic is now back to about 80% of last year’s level, while Emirates and flydubai are operating at roughly 90% of their 2025 levels.
“My confidence level is not misplaced that we should be back to 100% of our operation by about the end of the year,” he said, referring to international airlines resuming services.
Dubai Airports expects full-year traffic to finish “in the 70 millions”—well below last year’s record—and putting its previous ambition of crossing 100 million passengers this year out of reach.
The war has created an opening for competitors; previously, Gulf carriers accounted for roughly a third of traffic between Europe and Asia and about half of travel between Europe and Australia. By April, Middle Eastern transfer traffic on Asia-Western Europe routes had fallen 47% year over year, according to Alton Aviation Consultancy.
Travelers chose alternative hubs including Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong and Istanbul. Incheon International Airport said its transfer traffic rose 18% in the first half, helping it surpass Dubai and Heathrow in preliminary international passenger data.
Griffiths believes much of that shift will prove temporary. He said resumed services into Dubai are returning with load factors in the 80% to 90% range. At the same time, airlines that moved aircraft onto busy European summer routes are likely to restore Gulf capacity as winter schedules begin. But he questioned why some government travel advisories had yet to catch up with conditions on the ground, arguing that “it is safe” to travel to the UAE.
Several major foreign carriers have not yet resumed service: British Airways has suspended flights to Dubai until the end of October, whilst Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines are also holding off until late October.
“My confidence level is not misplaced that we should be back to 100% of our operation by about the end of the year”
Paul Griffiths, CEO, Dubai AirportsThe conflict also forced Dubai Airports to improvise. During alerts, passengers were moved to safe areas, and aircraft could be landed quickly when threats emerged. When the airport was temporarily unable to fuel aircraft, Griffiths said it used a “splash and dash” contingency where planes departed Dubai International Airport, landed at Al Maktoum International Airport (an aviation hub located 40 kilometers southwest of Dubai’s city center) to refuel, then continued their journeys.
Dubai Airports has also used the slowdown in traffic to continue upgrades across its infrastructure, including expanded self-service, biometric systems, smarter operational technology and passenger-flow improvements. Griffiths said the priority is to make the airport more efficient rather than to rethink its strategy in light of a crisis he considers temporary.
That applies most clearly to Dubai’s $35 billion expansion of Al Maktoum International Airport, which remains on track to begin operations in 2032.
It is expected to be the world’s largest airport, eventually accommodating 260 million passengers, as well as 12 million tons of cargo. Griffiths said 10 million work hours have been logged on the project over the past 15 months, alongside 17,000 concrete piles and 45 million cubic meters of earth moved.
He said the lesson from previous shocks—from the financial crisis to the Covid pandemic—is not to confuse short-term disruption with a long-term structural shift. When he asked Dubai Airports’ chairman whether the war changed the emirate’s aviation plans, Griffiths said, “It was the shortest conversation, and the answer was ‘absolutely not’.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
