Mohi Binhendi: The man who shaped Dubai Airports

Gulf News

Witty, charismatic, gracious and down to earth yet so larger than life, Mohi-Din BinHendi’s life is the stuff that legends are made of. The former director general of civil aviation (DGCA) - Dubai, now chairman and CEO of BinHendi Enterprises, is the man who helped shape Dubai airport and Dubai Duty Free.  Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/1.80324195  See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km

Transcript

00:00I'll tell you one thing. All other airports in the world, I try to go an hour, an hour and a half

00:07before the flight. But when I go to Dubai airport, I go three hours or four hours before because I

00:13can shop, I can wander around and then you know buy my things if I want to buy anything. So it's

00:20really an airport that makes you very comfortable. So let's talk about the 21 years of my

00:30position as the DGCA, which is Director General of Civil Aviation.

00:36Well it happened in 1978 when I was appointed by a decree from the government of Dubai

00:42and then the journey started for me because when I asked my

00:49uh uh minister of defense, designer Sheikh Mohammed, that I wanted to ask him a question.

00:59He said don't ask me any question. Now this airport is in your custody. You either make it

01:06or you fail. So the challenge was there from the day one and I knew that he wanted

01:13the journey to be very successful for the airport and the aviation industry.

01:18And it was my job to do that job and get it done. So we started, of course me and my team started

01:27to see where we could really put efforts to make this airport very interesting, very comfortable

01:35and very international. And this was the fact for everyone had to contribute

01:43to a better style and a better effort to do this. We wanted the immigration to be fast. We wanted

01:51the customs to be proper. We wanted the directions of getting visas and all very right and set.

01:59And we wanted people to be comfortable from all angles. And this is few of the things that was

02:07our priorities but there were so many other things. It was about car parking. It was about

02:14where you you know offload your baggage, how you are met at the airport, how you are

02:21checked in to the airport. So there are so many

02:26factors that made the airport successful. It was the police, it was Donata, it was the airlines,

02:33it was the DGCA and everybody had to put an effort. So I was the motivator for this. I was

02:41motivating people to that we are going to another step, another stage and we need to be very

02:50competitive with the other airports. So we started doing as I told you before that we wanted the

02:58comfort to start from the amenities that were there like the toilets and the cleanliness of

03:08the airport, the furniture at the airport, the AC comfort of the airport, the cafes and the restaurant

03:17need that people have while traveling. So we all put this together and we started working towards

03:24a complete program where it was done by my department which is the civil aviation.

03:33We created comfortable queuing for the immigration. We had very polite and very

03:43you know people that were very aware of their prestige so they were not pushed or spoken to

03:53in a hard way. So all this creates an impression in the people's mind that they went to an airport

04:00which was very civilized and then came the turn of the duty-free. That was a challenge

04:08and my mind switched on to an international standard of the duty-free.

04:14Yes, we did not have any space but when the the caterer Albert Abella moved from

04:25the lower part of the airport which was about 30,000 square feet of area, that's the time my

04:32mind started to work that I need a duty-free over here where it will be about 26, 28 stores

04:41where people will be comfortable, people will have goods at a very competitive prices,

04:47people will have a choice of merchandise and I called a friend who I knew very well who worked

04:56for me as a designer here in Dubai called Brian Adam. It's not the singer but Brian Adam, a guy who

05:03worked and lived here. He was a British. He was married and then he moved to Singapore. So the

05:12thing that came to my mind I needed Brian to come to Dubai to see the area and to make me a conceptual

05:19design so I can take it to his highness and show him and surprise him. He did a conceptual design

05:26very well done with you know artistic way and giving the definition of each store and everything

05:34and he came back after 15 days. I took that big zipper bag for the drawing and I went to his

05:40highness' majlis and of course as soon as he saw the bag he said what is this Buhi and I said I

05:50have something you want to see it now or after lunch and it was lunchtime. He said no now. So I

05:56opened the drawing and he looked at it and he said duty-free but you don't have any place at the

06:02airport. I said no your highness we have a place because Alba Tabela who were the caterers their

06:10building was ready so they moved from this area and they've gone to their new operations building.

06:18So he said good I'm going to come tomorrow morning at nine o'clock and see the area.

06:22Short enough he comes to the airport. The place was messy because it was a kitchen.

06:27He looked at it he loved it and he said go ahead good luck and we did very well the first year we

06:33did 25 million US dollars and then I came up with the ideas of raffling the cars so that was another

06:42edition of excitement at the airport and so forth and then Dubai started to have the name and the

06:50buzz around the area and in the world that there is a beautiful airport no matter how small it is

06:57but it works beautifully and then we did so many other things at the airport we did a new runway

07:06another runway so we have two runways now we added so many arrivals hall and departures the whole

07:14so the airport by the grace of god went very well and I was very successful with my team and I would

07:20have been nothing without my team because it's a team effort that made me successful and of course

07:27always the leader gets the credit but it is a credit to everyone who was there at that time

07:31and worked with me.

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