Singapore’s transport minister has announced that the country will restart the build of Changi Airport’s fifth terminal, which is set to open in the mid-2030s.
Singapore will restart the development of a fifth ‘mega’ terminal at its Changi Airport, after a forced two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The announcement comes as regional and global air and passenger traffic recovers from the impacts of the global travel bans.
According to transport minister S. Iswaran, air traffic at Changi Airport doubled in May compared with March to stand at about 40 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
“Given the current and projected recovery in air travel demand, we have a renewed impetus to secure our infrastructural capacity for growth,” he said in a speech held at the Changi Aviation Summit on Tuesday.
Singapore is one of Asia’s main travel hubs, with over 68 million passengers passing through Changi Airport in 2019.
Transport minister S. Iswaranpause said the pause allowed the review of the terminal’s design; to enhance its resilience and sustainability and ensure it would meet the needs of post-pandemic travel.
The new terminal is being built to cope with a whopping 50 million passengers per year.
Singapore plans to start construction of the new terminal in two to three years, to have it ready to meet anticipated demand around the mid-2030s, Iswaran said.
In its latest monthly financial report, Singapore Airlines and Scoot (SIA) reported a total of 1,452,500 passengers carried in April 2022, up 62.7 per cent from the previous month.
The SIA Group said demand for air travel increased significantly in April 2022 with group passenger capacity reaching 57 per cent of pre-Covid-19 levels in April 2022, six percentage points above the month before.
The passenger load factor (PLF) for the month stood at 72.7 per cent, the highest since the onset of the pandemic.
For more information visit www.changiairport.com and www.singaporeair.com
Source: Reuters