Dubai's airport chief said today that Al Maktoum International Airport will officially open in June of next year.

'The first runway will be ready in June 2010. The first cargo flights will leave then and the airport will be ready for passengers,' Paul Griffiths told delegates at the Arabian Hotel Investment COnference.

The new airport, which is slated to be the world's largest passenger and freight hub, will eventually have capacity for 160 million passengers a year. The new $33bn facility and surrounding multi-use development, being built in the outskirts of Dubai near Jebel Ali, was originally scheduled to open in June of this year.

Last month, Griffiths announced that the opening had been delayed and that the number of runways at the airport had been scaled back to five from the six slated originally.