Dubai's Planned $32B Mega Airport Project | Hacker News Reader

Dubai's Planned $32B Mega Airport Project

tamernoah.substack.com

26 pointssilahyd15 comments

This is the only post authored by @tamernoah substack account. Is this the same campaign as the one mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40164077 ?

Yep.

CNN has an article about this from 2014[0], including the $32B price tag, runway count, passenger count. The only addition information seems to be the new terminal designs (per the tweet) - and it looks amazing, but there are better sources/ways to see the renders: [1][2]

[0]: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/dubai-al-maktoum-airp... [1]: https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/aviation/2024/04/28... [2]: https://www.khaleejtimes.com/business/aviation/sheikh-mohamm...

Everything mentions how much money it costs to build these things. Are there any sources or estimates on cost of maintaining them? E.g. how much a year it costs for Dubai to not shut down?

Given, that modern airports are (highly profitable) shopping centers maintenance will pay for itself.

Price tag seems steep for a transportation hub but i bet that will be passed on to the tickets for a couple decades as tax. Same price as 3 gorges dam.

At 260 million passengers per year, that's $6 per ticket on a 20 year payback. By my understanding this is affordable as JFK is around $15 per passenger in fees.

That also assumes that people will want to travel the same amounts in the future or that other hubs won’t also be expanding and competing. In my opinion the main problem with Dubai is there isn’t a reason to actually visit it or spend time there for most people. It’s hot, in a dusty desert, and the main attractions are luxuries like shopping. But maybe that’s why this proposal seems more based on business (shopping and logistics).

Yes when they run out of oil money at some point I doubt there will be much airport traffic or money to keep the airport of this size running.

Dubai never had much oil

Yes Dubai is a satire, not a city. Most passengers don't stop but transit there. The reason they choose such route - Dubai is a hub that offers 1000s of routes.

My alternative is 1 extra leg to avoid Dubai or Qatar. Occasionally that works for me - I do have extra days and funds to checkout cities. Most people don't.

Who is this competing against? Qatar? Saudi Arabia? Or Singapore?

Most of Dubai air traffic is transit for South Asian passengers. So mostly Air India and IndiGo.

And back when, Dubai's main industries were pearl fishing and smuggling gold to India.

Maybe Türkiye?

I’d prefer Dubai over Türkiye for Asia <-> Europe trips.

Türkiye had a bet a few years ago too and built a massive airport in hope to steal some of the show from Heathrow.

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