It has just been confirmed: Dubai International is still the busiest international airport in the world.

The airport retained the top spot in 2015 by registering traffic of 78 million people for the year. That’s a 10.7 per cent increase from 2014 (phew, that’ll explain passport control).

London Heathrow is the world’s second busiest international airport, it handled 69.76 million international passengers last year.

Dubai International retains its top spot due to the fact it services 100 airlines and connects with 240 destinations around the world.

dubai-airport-1970sdubai-airport-1971THEN: Dubai Airport in the 1970s

*READ MORE: Dubai airport is about to get bigger (and get a Middle-East-first eatery)*

August and December were the airport’s busiest times, with both months seeing more than 7 million people coming through the terminals.

concourse-2An unusually-quiet concourse in the contemporary airport.

Throughout last year, DXB brought in new airlines, including Air Canada from Toronto, Eurowings from Cologne and China Southern from Wuhan. Also, 12 new passenger destinations were added due to the ongoing network expansion of Dubai-based airlines flydubai and Emirates.

As per usual, India remained the largest single destination country from Dubai, with 10.39 million passengers travelling between Dubai and there in 2015 (in 2014 that number was 8.9 million). The second most popular destination was the UK, followed by Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, travel to and from the USA went up by 25 per cent from 2014 to 2015.

dubai-lounge-1970sA Dubai Airport lounge in the 1970s.

This is all good news, but as Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports points out, there’s no time to sit back: “We have no time to rest on our laurels as we are already busy testing the readiness of our newest facility, the USD 1.2 billion Concourse D, which, when it opens for our 70 plus airlines this quarter, will play a crucial role in helping us welcome millions of passengers in comfort and style.”

dxb-sunset-a380– For more about Dubai straight to your newsfeed, follow us on Facebook.