Dubai International airport expects to meet its target of 89 million passengers for the full year 2017.

For this to happen, passenger traffic at Dubai International should have reached at least 8.6 million in December 2017, given the airport processed 80.39 million passengers between January and November 2017.

While the operator, Dubai Airports, has yet to release the figures for December, Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports, has alluded that the target will be met. “Given the high passenger traffic volumes we welcomed in December, we anticipate ending the year on a positive note,” Griffiths said in a statement released on 4 January.

Historical data shows the airport's passenger traffic for the month of December, usually the busiest month of the year next to August and July, averaged 6.5 million over a five-year period starting in 2012, or higher – at 7.4 million – between 2015 and 2016.

This implies the airport could still risk missing its target for the first time unless passenger traffic in December 2017 had grown at double-digit rates compared with the same month of the previous year, in which passenger traffic reached 7.7 million.

Dubai International processed more than 83.6 million passengers in 2016, maintaining for the second straight year its status as the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passenger traffic.

The airport has the capacity to handle up to 92.5 million passengers a year.