The departures road at Terminal 3

A firefighter died fighting the Flight 521 blaze

You're standing outside Dubai International Terminal 3, the Emirates-only building that opened in 2008 and still ranks as the largest airport terminal on Earth. About 930 meters from here, Emirates Flight 521 crash-landed on 3 August 2016. The Boeing 777 had flown in from Thiruvananthapuram, India. It touched down hard, bounced, and came down again on its belly, skidding down the runway in flames. All 300 people aboard got out alive. A firefighter working the blaze, Jassim Issa Al Baloushi, died when a fuel tank exploded during the rescue. The wreck closed Dubai's runways for hours, one of the busiest stretches of sky in the world.

Terminal 3 itself was built for Emirates alone, a partly underground complex that cost $4.5 billion. Concourse A, finished in 2013, was the first terminal building anywhere designed around the Airbus A380 from the ground up, with eighteen gates built to take the double-decker jet. A driverless people mover still shuttles passengers between the concourses, running since Concourse A opened.

Dubai's dark reputation runs wider than this curb. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, was assassinated in a Dubai hotel room in 2010. Suzanne Tamim, a Lebanese singer, was murdered in the city in 2008. Chechen commander Sulim Yamadayev was shot dead here in 2009. The city that built the world's busiest airport has also, more than once, been where people came to kill quietly.

A sand runway opened for DC-3s

Before any of these terminals stood here, this ground was a strip of compacted sand. Dubai International Airport opened on 30 September 1960, built on the order of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum. The runway could handle a Douglas DC-3 and nothing bigger. A small terminal and three turning areas were all that stood where Terminal 3 now runs for nearly a kilometer. The company Costain built it, and a firm called International Aeradio designed it. For a city that now moves more international passengers than anywhere else on Earth, it began as a single sand strip and a handful of guards paid about 440 rupees a month.

112 people died in the Sterling Airways crash

Before Flight 521, there was another crash here. On 14 March 1972, Sterling Airways Flight 296 came down on approach to Dubai. 112 people died. It remains one of the deadliest air disasters tied to this airport.

A hijacked jet landed here with five minutes of fuel

In August 1984, this airport became part of a hijacking that started on the other side of the subcontinent. Seven armed members of a banned Sikh group took over Indian Airlines Flight 421 on a domestic run from Delhi to Srinagar. The seven hijackers forced the Boeing 737 to circle the Golden Temple in Amritsar, then diverted it to Lahore, then Karachi, then finally here. Dubai air traffic control refused the plane permission to land and switched off the runway lights. The pilot, Captain V.K. Mehta, warned he would have to ditch the plane in the sea with no fuel left. Dubai relented. The jet landed with five minutes of fuel in the tanks. The UAE's defense minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, then negotiated the passengers' release and the hijackers' surrender.

A tunnel and flower center joined the airport

Terminal 2 opened in 1998, and two years later Concourse C opened as the Sheikh Rashid Terminal, with its own hotel, health club, and post office, reached by a tunnel long enough to need moving walkways. Runways were rebuilt and widened through 2003 and 2004. In 2005, the airport added a dedicated flower center, built because Dubai had become a hub for importing and exporting cut flowers that needed careful handling in the desert heat.

Terminal 3 opened as an Emirates-only building

Terminal 3 opened on 14 October 2008, the building you're standing outside now. Qantas became the first outside carrier to use it in 2012, under a codeshare deal, flying out of the same A380 concourse built for the superjumbo. Qantas pulled out again in 2018 when it rerouted its Australia-to-London flights through Singapore instead. United Airlines began flying from Terminal 3 in 2023, and Air Canada moved its Toronto service here the same year, both riding partnerships with Emirates.

The airport installed the region's largest solar system

On 2018's heels, flydubai began flying out of Terminal 3 too, helping passengers transfer more easily onto Emirates connections. By 2019, the airport had installed the region's largest airport solar power system, part of a push to cut Dubai's overall energy use by 2030.

Drones struck the airport twice within weeks

Twenty years after Flight 521 burned out nearby, drones started falling from the sky over this airport. On 28 February 2026, a drone strike damaged a concourse here, injuring four staff members. Terminals had already been cleared under contingency plans. The following month, in March 2026, two drones fell near the airport on a Wednesday, injuring four more people: two Ghanaian nationals, one Bangladeshi, and one Indian. Air traffic kept moving through both incidents. On a separate Friday morning, suspected drone activity halted departures for about half an hour.

A single sand strip became the busiest airport on Earth

About three quarters of a mile from where you stand, that first 1960 runway and terminal have long since vanished under Concourse C, the people mover, and acres of apron. The airport Sheikh Rashid ordered built for DC-3s now moves more international passengers each year than any other airport on the planet. In 2025 alone, it handled over 95 million passengers and 2.2 million tons of cargo.