Dubai International, DXB, is maintaining its position as the world’s busiest hub for international passengers with traffic reaching 64.5 million passengers in the first nine months of 2019.

According to a press release issued by Dubai Airports today, a total of 23,217,492 passengers travelled through DXB in the third quarter (-2.4% YoY), bringing the year to date traffic to 64,495,241 (-4.5% YoY). The slight contraction in year to date numbers is mainly the result of the closure of one of DXB’s two runways for 45 days for a runway rehabilitation project during May-April, as well as the impact of the worldwide grounding of Boeing 737 Max aircraft since March this year.

DXB handled a total of 636,575 tonnes of cargo in the third quarter (-5.9% YoY) taking the year to date figure to 1,886,237 tonnes, down 4.1%. A bulk of the cargo traffic at DXB is belly-hold which was impacted by reduction in capacity during the runway rehabilitation project.

With 97,498 flights recorded in the third quarter, the year to date flight numbers reached 275,882, down 9.9% from last year.

India held its position as DXB’s top destination country by passenger numbers, with traffic for the first nine months reaching 8.8 million customers, followed by Saudi Arabia with 4.8 million customers, and the United Kingdom with 4.6 million customers. Other destination countries of note include Pakistan (3 million customers), the U.S. (2.4 million), and China (1.9 million).

The top three cities were London (2.7 million customers), Mumbai (1.7 million) and Riyadh with 1.6 million customers.

Wait times across DXB were reduced by 15% in the first nine months of 2019. DXB also handled a total of 54.5 million bags during the first nine months of the year.