Dubai's monarch unveiled a $35 billion plan Sunday for a sprawling, futuristic new airport featuring a terminal with indoor palm trees and elevated islands of greenery.
The eponymous Al Maktoum International Airport would be five times the size of the existing Dubai International Airport and would accommodate up to 260 million passengers for the "world's largest capacity," Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum boasted in a post on X.
The new airport in southern Dubai would eventually be surrounded by a city with housing for a million people, and would "host the world's leading companies in the logistics and air transport sectors," said the sheikh
"We are building a new project for future generations, ensuring continuous and stable development for our children and their children in turn," he wrote. "Dubai will be the world's airport, its port, its urban hub, and its new global center."
Today, we approved the designs for the new passenger terminals at Al Maktoum International Airport, and commencing construction of the building at a cost of AED 128 billion as part of Dubai Aviation Corporation's strategy.
— HH Sheikh Mohammed (@HHShkMohd) April 28, 2024
Al Maktoum International Airport will enjoy the… pic.twitter.com/oG973DGRYX
Plans call for five parallel runways and gates for 400 aircraft, and Dubai's new airport would replace its existing one "in the coming years," Mohammed said.
It's unclear when construction is expected to be completed.
Earlier this month, the Dubai International Airport was flooded by thunderstorms that dumped record amounts of rain on the United Arab Emirates.
Dubai is one of seven city-states that comprise the UAE, a desert nation that covers an area slightly larger than South Carolina along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf and the western coast of the Gulf of Oman in the Middle East.
The oil-rich UAE is an American ally that, along with Bahrain, signed U.S.-brokered peace agreement with Israel in September 2020.
In February, it also entered into a pact with India to create a transcontential trade corridor to Europe that's backed by the U.S. and the European Union.
It has a per capita gross domestic product comparable to those in Western European nations and an ambitious space program that's focused on satellite development, according to the CIA World Factbook.
