Dubai International Airport handled more than four million passengers in August.

The total volume of passengers in August was 4,019,230 compared with 3,987,184 passengers in August 2010. This represented a year-on-year increase of 0.8 per cent. This is the sixth month where traffic has topped four million at the airport this year.

“It’s clear four million passengers per month is the new standard at Dubai International Airport,” says Paul Griffiths, chief executive officer of Dubai Airports. “We are on track to meet our projection for 51 million passengers by year end.”

The airport has handled a total of 33,311,157 passengers since the start of the year. This is an eight per cent rise on passenger traffic in the first eight months of 2010 which stood at 30,857,624.

The regions that generated the largest traffic growth in August were the GCC, North America, India, Russia and the CIS. In country terms, the largest traffic growth was seen on routes to Saudi Arabia, the US, Bangladesh, Thailand and Ethiopia.

Due to the political uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa combined with Ramadan, passenger traffic on these routes was down by 65,000 in August.

In terms of air freight, cargo volumes dropped 7.9 per cent in August with Dubai International Airport handling 182,781 tonnes of freight compared with 198,543 tonnes during the same period in 2010.

In the year to date, the airport has handled a total of 1,433,270 tonnes of cargo, compared with 1,451,048 tonnes the previous year, which amounts to a dip of 1.2 per cent. Air freight traffic has been impacted by economic uncertainty in the US and Europe.

Aircraft movements during August totalled 25,845, up 2.6 per cent from the 25,202 posted during the same period in 2010. In 2011 to date, aircraft movements numbered 212,383, up 5.5 per cent from 201,362 posted during the first eight months of 2010.