Middle East is ripe for aviation investment

The Middle East has the most potential when it comes to aviation investment, a new survey has suggested.Conducted by Airport Show ahead of next month's inaugural Global Airport Leaders' Forum, the study sought to find out which parts of the world have the brightest future in air travel.It emerged that 64.4 per cent of the respondents felt the Middle East was the best place to invest, making the region an emphatic overall winner. The next most popular area was Asia-Pacific, which only amassed 16.7 per cent of the vote.Experts predict that US$90 billion (AED 330.5 billion) will be pumped into the Middle Eastern aviation sector by 2020 and up to 400 million passengers will fly into and out of this part of the world every year by this point.”Senior executives from across the international aviation industry have contributed to the survey and we believe the survey results will contribute significantly to the important discussions at the Global Airport Leaders' Forum and help highlight the key challenges and opportunities industry leaders face today,” commented Daniyal Qureshi, event director of the Airport Show.Unsurprisingly, Dubai is central to the Middle East's expansion plans and the city is expected to accommodate just under a quarter of the region's air traffic by the end of the decade.Dubai International Airport officially became the second-busiest aviation hub on the planet last month, behind only London's Heathrow.The facility has recently been expanded and has a capacity of 75 million passengers a year – up from 60 million in 2012.Around 66 million people are expected to use the complex in 2013 and this figure will go up and up as the years pass by.To help take some of the strain off the main airport, services will be launched at Dubai World Central Airport from October this year for the first time.The passenger terminal was finished in 2012 and it has room for up to seven million people each year.