Dubai World Central anchor airline to start passenger

World Central (DWC) Al Maktoum International is waiting for an anchor airline to kick off passenger operations, according to Dubai Airports' top executive. "We are in negotiations now with several airlines and we are looking for a significant commitment before we want to put several hundred of our people and our resources up into the new terminal. We don't want to have a terminal that doesn't have any business. So we are making sure that we have got a good anchor airline to start operations," Paul Griffiths, Dubai Airports CEO, said yesterday on the sidelines of a conference to announce an updated programme for Dubai International Airport's Concourse 3. He added that the airports body has had "some interesting discussions" with a number of parties, "some of whom actually want to place airplanes at DWC". Griffiths also said that no date has been decided to start passenger flights from DWC. "We would rather make sure we have got something that we can announce," he said. The DWC's passenger terminal will be ready for occupation once operational trials are completed this year, Griffiths said. "However, we have made a strategic decision that we don't want to open the terminal until such time as we have got to find operations," he added. According to original estimates, DWC when completed, is estimated to be a $34 billion (Dh124.9 billion) project. "That clearly is going to be the cost over an extended period of time," Griffiths said. Augmenting capacity Meanwhile, Dubai Airports said that Dubai International's Concourse 3 — the world's first purpose-built A380 facility — is on track for completion by year-end, and will open to the public in the first quarter of next year. It wil increase the airport's capacity to 62 million passengers from the current 51 million. Designing of the new Concourse 4, which will be dedicated to more than 110 international airlines, is also under way.