What’s On The Horizon For: Singapore Changi

Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) saw 15.3 million passenger movements during the third quarter of 2023, marking a return to 89% of 2019 levels as traffic continues to recover.

The airport’s biggest markets for period were Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, with China also entering the top five thanks to increased travel during China’s two-month summer holiday in July and August, and the resumption of the 15-day visa free policy for Singapore citizens entering China since July.

In November, SIN reopened its Terminal 2 (T2) after three and a half years of engineering and expansion works, restoring four-terminal operations at the airport. Speaking at Routes World 2023 in Istanbul in October, Peh Ke-Wei, Vice President of Air Hub Development at Changi Airport Group explained that T2’s completion is timely and needed to meet capacity requirements, in anticipation of full travel recovery to pre-pandemic levels in 2024.

The T2 expansion project has added five million passengers per year to SIN’s capacity, bringing the total capacity to 90 million.

“We are all very excited that now Terminal 2 is fully open and ready to help us recover the traffic that is expected over the next one to two years,” Peh Ke-Wei says. In the short-term, the airport’s focus is to recover more city links within the Asis-Pacific region, including further growth in China.

Longer term, attracting more long-haul links are on the agenda. SIN has already secured two notable new routes for 2024 with Air Canada set to return to Singapore after an absence of three decades, and Singapore Airlines adding flights to Brussels.

“On top of that, we see opportunities for us to be connected to more points in the Eastern seaboard of America and the team is working very hard on that,” Peh Ke-Wei says. He adds that cities like Geneva and Madrid in Europe are also targets.