Abstract
The air transport market in the Middle East is undergoing a rapid transformation as passenger traffic is beginning to surge through the area, primarily because of the rapid expansion of the Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways. Meanwhile, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha airports have launched massive expansion projects to match the future traffic forecasts, and will have a combined capacity of 340 million passengers by 2020. The key aim of this paper is to assess if these airports will attain their objective of being able to match their projected airport capacity with passenger traffic. In order to achieve this, the paper studies the region's demographics and socioeconomics; the ongoing air transport developments; the hub and spoke mechanisms; and the growth of the region's low cost carriers. Traffic forecasts are then constructed for each airport to investigate if the future passenger growth is likely to meet the airports' expansion programs.