In the original plan (see background picture) the airport covers an area of 220 square kilometres and has six parallel runways, each of them 4,500m long (“Airbus 380 enabled”) and with a gap of 800m between them, so that all of them can be used parallel and at the same time without the risk of wake turbulences.
Once completed Dubai World Central should be the world's largest passenger and cargo hub with a capacity of 12 million tonnes of cargo and up to 160 million people per year. (Just to compare: the currently busiest passenger airport is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Int. Airport with 90 million people (2008))
Furthermore it was planned that the DWC airport will be connected to Dubai Metro and a not yet existing DWC light railway.
The project was expected to be completed and fully operational by 2017, but the global financial crisis made the owner, the Government of Dubai, cut the number of runways to five and postpone the time of completion to 2027 (now called “Phase 2”)
On the 27th of June 2010 the airport was officially opened with one runway and only for cargo flights. The first plain actually landed a few days before that, on the 20th of June 2010 (Emirates Sky Cargo Boeing 777 from Hong Kong) to test the various functions and equipment of the airport.
On the 24th of February 2011 DWC was certified to handle passenger aircrafts with up to 60 passengers. Four days later the first passenger aircraft, an Airbus A319, landed.
The extension (“Phase 2”) of Dubai World Central, including the construction of four additional runways, will be started depending on the utilization of the existing structures.
Important: Unfortunately I had to change the container size to "nano" (capsule with magnet), because everything bigger was muggled or removed within a few days.
Congratulations FTF: meerblau, choconaren & TrueGeo!