Singapore’s Changi airport sees August growth, eyes new markets

Singapore’s Changi International Airport reported a 7.9% year-on-year (YOY) passenger growth in August, seeing 5.7m passengers passing through its gates. Since the beginning of 2018, Changi’s four terminals have handled 43.5m passengers. Operator Changi Airport Group said the European market grew 22% in August, followed by South Asia at 13%. Traffic to/from Oceania also achieved a 10% YOY increase for the first time in 2018. Commercial aircraft movements increased 3.6% to 32,890 takeoff and landings on its two runways, although air cargo growth was modest at 1.8%. “China and India are growth markets for us; China has overtaken Indonesia in terms of visitor arrivals into Singapore. And traffic volume between Singapore and China was 6.3m in 2017,” CAG associate general manager-airline development and air hub development Liew Zhong Yao said. He observed the emergence of new cities that can sustain demand for direct service and gave the example of how China’s Zhengzhou was decoupled from a transit flight via Xiamen to a nonstop flight to Singapore. Similarly, he also foresees routes such as China Eastern’s Yantai-Fuzhou-Singapore service maturing into direct flight from Yantai.<br/>