Dubai World Center Airport Operations Management

Dubai World Center Airport Operations Management
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ABSTRACT
Dubai is one of the United Arab Emirates, it has been a center for remarkable growth and development over the years. It currently has a population of a little over 2 million citizens. The past few decades have especially witnessed a rapid growth in the city's development projects to a ‘world-leader' status. Primarily, Dubai is an ideal region for socio-economic and infrastructure development owing to its geographical location. The Dubai World Central (DWC) in specific is an ideal and modern aerotropolis that is centered around Al Maktoum International Airport and serves the purpose of connecting flights from most parts of the world with tactical ease. It is noteworthy to mention that Dubai's aviation sector is responsible for 28% of the Emirate's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Additionally, it is a source of employment for numerous local and international personnel (IBP, Inc., 2014).
Dubai is one out of seven Arab Emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is quite unfortunate that only little is known of its historic development since the culture of initial inhabitants did not focus on documenting happenings. Nonetheless, the area covered by the UAE has been occupied by people of Arab descent for thousands of years that have past. This is mostly because it served as a major trading area that connected the East and the West during prehistoric times (Ramos, 2012). By the inception of the 20th century however, the people of area started keeping documentation mostly because of the booming Pearls' trade with the merchants of Venice. During earlier times, though, Dubai was dependent on Abu Dhabi for the establishment of its economy until it became a British protectorate in 1892. It was not until 1971 that it became part of the United Arab Emirates.
It is understood that the past half century has witnessed rapid growth and development of Dubai's economy. One major area involved is that of ‘Building and Construction', which contributes not less that 25% to the overall economy (IBP, Inc., 2014). It is also no secret that the city possesses sufficient capital to initiate massive developmental projects to improve its economy. Dubai Internet City is a project worth mentioning whenever development projects of Dubai are under discussion. This has been developed to be a ‘free trade zone' that focuses on technological businesses, which are vital to overall establishment of Dubai as a major economic hub. To this point, leading companies like Microsoft, Nokia, HP and IBM among others have shifted focus to Dubai as the ideal location for their world regional establishments, an indication of the city being a preferred strategic hub connecting Asia, Africa and Europe. This paper however focuses on Dubai World Center- Al Maktoum International Airport (Dubai Airports, 2014: Hvidt, 2009).
Table of Contents
ABSTRACT……......................................................................................................................... 2
Contents…................................................................................................................................... 3
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 4
Study and Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 4
Location Decision............................................................................................................ 4
Layout and Design ........................................................................................................... 8
Conclusion……………..… ......................................................................................................... 9
Recommendation………….......................................................................................................... 9
References..................................................................................................................................... 10
Introduction
It is for the most part due a forecasted economic expansion that the government of Dubai is keen to invest hugely on infrastructure and other development projects. So far, Dubai international airport is one of the busiest in the world (Hvidt, 2009). Even so, Dubai's leadership foresees a rapid increment in the city's need for development as it continues to be the preferred destination for business and pleasure for more and more people around the world. This projection has considered many years to come and as a result, the city has embarked on development projects for the future. One such project is Dubai World Central- Al Maktoum international Airport (Govers, Frank, Go., 2009).
The Dubai world Central (DWC) is a major project of the Dubai government and most probably one of the greatest project the world has ever seen considering the amount of capital input. The scale and magnitude of the project is on the verge of creating the first ever fully logistically integrated built environment aerotropolis; having sufficient transport channels and value added services that include manufacture and assembly lines in one complete Free Zone (CNN, 2013). It is the vision of Dubai's leadership to make DWC a highly operational-sufficient exhibition especially around Al Maktoum Airport, which will be able to handle cargo of up to 12million tones. The location of Al Maktoum Airport is also closer to Dubai's manmade port and covers close to 150 Km2 area of land. The DWC is also expected to house close to a million people in addition to being a major tourist attraction site that can handle up to 20 million foreign visitors per annum (Ramos, 2012).
Study and Analysis
It remains a major contributing factor to the development of the airport, that the UAE stands to have a great need for air transport services because of its rapidly developing aviation sector and the project is hence highly viable owing to the central geographic location it bears. In fact, close to two thirds of the world population can access Dubai by taking a flight of not more than eight hours. From a business perspective, the DWC remains a potential hub for the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) market region (Davidson, 2008).
The Location Decision; its Services and Advantages
The close proximity of the DWC areas or clusters is also an important advantage that facilitates its development, owing to the combined synergies. There exists a need to link sea and air transport services to the southern side of Dubai as provided by the Jebel Ali port. As a result, the project has improved accessibility coupled with reduced operational and logistical costs. Dubai Logistics City (DLC) facilitates sufficient infrastructure capacity- highways 311 and 611, linking all clusters of the DWC with Jebel Ali (free trade area) and the rest of Dubai and the Emirates. Such a facility, considering its massive physical scale would be a center for attracting world-class business. This is in consideration of the fact that the airport would be able to handle a good number of huge jumbo jets within acceptable and desired time ranges.
Though it has been referred to by other names in the recent past, the project's official name is Al Maktoum International Airport. Named after the former Dubai founder and ruler, Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum. The scheme was opened to run cargo transportation facilitated by a layout model installed in 2006. It is important to mention that the airport is close to ten times the size of a combination of Dubai International Airport and Dubai Cargo Village. The ultimate passenger and cargo handling capabilities are far beyond that of the current world's busiest airport, Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport. As mentioned, the planners of the project envisioned future needs of Dubai, working on a forecast of the next half century (DWC Project Details, 2014).
The Al Maktoum Airport is set to make the DWC, the first fully serviced Aerotropolis in the world (Donahue, 2010). As indicated, Dubai's central location among the world's continents is responsible for the forecasted increase in air traffic. It is also the center of the “Kangaroo route”, which links Europe to Australia. As such, it will be the most comprehensible air complex to handle aircrafts like the Airbus A380 crafts, owing to its designs of aero bridge gates that are well placed in its layout. This is besides having a good number of huge warehouses that stretch uninterrupted along the runways on the west side. The overall plan for the DWC per se is an advantage to the airport. The existence of the Logistics, golf and commercial and residential areas all work in harmony to create a most sustainable single scheme as an aerotropolis, a truly preferred location, destination or site for both business and pleasure (Govers, Frank, Go., 2009). Furthermore, the Airport area layout alone will be able to host up to a hundred thousand parking spaces foe workers, residents of DWC, visitors and other users. Being the largest parking space in a single complex in the world is truly an exceptional feature of the airport. The extended asphalted runways of the airport allow planes on a specific runway to bypass other runways as well as taxiways without any interference.
The DWC is also advantageous for business and trade as a Free Economic zone as this stands to increase the number of commercial flights to the area by great extents. This points out to a long-term forecasting of economic gains by the government of Dubai as a strategic initiative. The focus remains the enhancement of global trade and development of the larger UAE to relatively higher levels of development.
As a connecting point to MENESA, Dubai, via the Al Maktoum Airport stands to increase its share in the region's GDP of over US $4 trillion (2013). The region is also home to over a quarter of the world's population. This trade is for the most part facilitated by sea-to-air and air-to-sea trade facilitated by the Airport and Jebel Ali port via the Logistics corridor. As a result, there is high propensity for increased speed, connectivity and efficiency in trade activities on a global scale. Besides, the establishment of the Airport has attracted big names in the logistics business to Dubai for purposes of achieving global growth and development. These include Aramex, Panalpina and Kuehne- Nagel. Dubai has as a result achieved an actual multimodal business platform, becoming more and more attractive to motivated enterprises. It is also well understood that a significant portion of overall world trade depends on air trade owing to its speed and convenience- this is expected to increase in the near future as other areas of the world get to adapt this way of conducting business, especially the developing countries, which are also investing in the airline sector.
The increasing demand for air transportation has undoubtedly made airports reliable economic indicators for economies around the world and Dubai has successfully established its mark on the globe as a competitive and strong economy through the DWC Al Maktoum Airport project. This achievement has been realized in an even more remarkable way by the expansion of the project beyond conventional ways to include urban development projects. The ‘aerotropolis' model of the DWC acts as an economic pace setter representation of mastermind design with forward-looking objectives (Barnett, 2010: DWC Project Details, 2014). This in turn has shifted focus from the West, making the Middle East a new c...