Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH) handled in excess of 10.1 million passengers during the first 5 months of 2017, registering 1.8% increase in traffic compared with the same period in 2016.

The month of May registered a slight decrease in traffic, down 2%, compared with May last year.  Ahmed Al Shamsi, Acting Chief Operations Officer at Abu Dhabi Airports, attributed this slight drop to fact that all airlines are now operating point to point flights, rather than transit flights, hence the airport is no longer registering any transit passengers in the figures. May 2016 recorded 12,559 transit passengers against zero this month. 

Acting COO, Al Shamsi, also confirmed that the overall traffic performance of the airport throughout 2017 has been on the positive side. However, May has always been one of the slowest months of the year being just before the summer holidays rush. 
On that note, Al Shamsi commented: “Abu Dhabi International Airport has geared up for the busy travel summer holiday season ahead of us, and we would like to take this opportunity to wish our travelers a safe journey to wherever they are going this summer, and we look forward to welcoming them back upon their return. We also invite locals and residents to register before they travel to use our Smart Travel system. This technology, available upon arrival and departure, ensures a quick and smooth passenger experience.” 

Key Traffic highlights: 
•    Traffic to India, one of the airport’s main traffic drivers representing 21% of total passengers this month, has shown a slight increase of 0.6% this month versus May last year. 
•    Saudi Arabia has become number 2 growing sharply by 7.8%, affected by the significant increase in passengers to Riyadh and Jeddah for Umrah. 
•    The UK came number 3, growing by 12% this month compared to same month last year. 
•    Passenger traffic to Australia grew significantly and recorded a 24% rise, affected by Etihad’s double daily flights to Sydney. 
•    The top two destinations for May were: Bombay growing by 3% due to the increase in the transfer and departure passengers, followed by London growing by 7% due to the increase in capacity by operating A380s on the route. 

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