The departure hall and arrival hall of Terminal 3 (T3) are spacious and pleasant

with large columns making it look like something the ancient Greeks or Romans
might have designed. For departures though, after clearing passport control and
security checks, one is thrust into the melee of the poorly designed
claustrophobic duty-free shopping area, a sharp contrast from the much less
hectic shopping area in Terminal 1 (which is connected to T3 if you want to
escape the crowds).
The new terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport (DIA) opened with a first flight
to Doha on 14 October 2008 at 14:15. There was a four phase operation to shift
all Emirates (EK) flights from terminal 1 (T1) to T3. When you walk around T3 and
think that it seems like a large building, that's because it is. The largest by
footprint area in the world, coming in at about 1.5 million sq meters / 1.5 square
km (or 16 million square feet). Phased transfer schedule for EK flights from T1 to
T3:

Phase I for flights to GCC and American destinations

Phase II for flights to Africa and other Middle East destinations

Phase III for flights to Europe

Phase IV for flights to Asia, Australia, and New Zealand

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN April 2009 - Dubai Airport Concourse 3 was in the news
when the joint venture (JV) contractors Al Habtoor Leighton Group and partners
Murray & Roberts & Takenaka downed tools and walked off the job due to
contractual difficulties. Al Jaber Engineering and Contracting (ALEC) became the
new contractors for the construction of the concourse.
ON 24 February 2010 (Emirates Business 24/7): Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths
said "When Concourse 3 is completed by the end of 2010, it will take the
airport's annual capacity to 75 million passengers. Between the two airports
[Dubai Airport and Jebel Ali Airport], we will have an initial combined capacity of
82 million passengers."
Concourse 3 was dedicated to A380 aircraft (Emirates onlY). Having been Under
construction from 2008 , the expected completion or opening date was set in
2011 ... maybe end of 2010 ... 2011 ... 2012 ... Q1 2013.
Officially the opening happened in January 2013, the project was valued at AED
12 billion, with an annual passenger capacity 19 million. Internal metro
connecting old and new terminal is 1.5 km long with capacity of 6,000
passengers per hour. New terminal was 645 m long, 90 m wide, 528 sq meter
area. Average annual growth in passenger numbers for Dubai Airport has been
about 9-10% since 1980, which increased to about 15% annual growth from
2002-2007, and was back to 10% or less after that. With such surges in demand
and the level of delays how will the vigourous expansion lan of more terminals be
met without creating a customer service fiasco is what made the nights sleepless
for the DBX management.