Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, president of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and chairman and CEO of Emirates was on hand to declare the MEBAA 2016 event officially open yesterday morning.

He toured the show site, accompanied by senior UAE civil and business aviation officials, including Khalifa Al Zaffin, executive chairman, Dubai Aviation City Corporation, the entity that runs Dubai South, and Ali Alnaqbi, founding chairman of MEBAA. Sheikh Ahmed took in the exhibition floor and also inspected several aircraft on the ramp.

He spoke to officials from ExecuJet Aviation Group, Sky Prime Aviation, GDC Group and Nexus, among others, before going on board the Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650, Dassault Falcon 8X, an ACJ318 put on show by Airbus, the HondaJet, the Citation Latitude, Comlux’s Boeing 767-200, a Bombardier Challenger 650 and Sky Prime’s VIP Airbus A340-200.