Changi Airport’s weekly passenger traffic hits 75% of pre-pandemic level

SINGAPORE – Up to 150,000 passengers are passing through Changi Airport daily, with about a million each week, or about 75 per cent of the average number of weekly passengers pre-pandemic, said Transport Minister S. Iswaran on Sunday.

This is more than twice the number who passed through the airport when

Singapore reopened its borders to vaccinated travellers

in April.

Despite the uptick, the airport is well equipped to handle the higher volume, Mr Iswaran said on Facebook, citing the reopenings of Terminal 4, on Sept 13, and the southern wing of Terminal 2, on Oct 11.

He added that Singapore’s aviation workforce is now at about 90 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Last Wednesday, Changi Airport Group (CAG) said 2022 has been a year of strong recovery, as the number of passengers and flight movements has climbed steadily over the months.

It handled 23.6 million passengers in the first 10 months of the year, representing 42 per cent of its pre-pandemic traffic.

Of those 23.6 million people, 3.69 million passed through Changi Airport’s terminals in October, or about 65 per cent of its traffic in October 2019.

“As at the first week of December 2022, 95 airlines operated over 5,500 weekly scheduled flights at Changi Airport, connecting Singapore to some 140 cities in 48 countries and territories worldwide,” CAG said, adding that this was 82 per cent of pre-pandemic connectivity.

Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand were the top traffic markets in the first 10 months, but the strongest passenger traffic recovery came from North America, South Asia and Europe.

CAG said: “Passenger traffic to and from North America has rebounded strongly to exceed pre-pandemic levels. For the South Asia market, apart from re-establishing all pre-Covid-19 city links, Changi added a new one to Pune on Dec 2. For Europe, Changi has almost returned to pre-Covid-19 level of flight frequencies.”

But while the outlook may seem optimistic, Mr Mayur Patel, head of Asia at global travel data provider OAG Aviation, said it will still be a while before the airport mounts a full recovery.

“For up to December 2022, Changi is still short of nearly 1.1 million seats compared with pre-Covid-19 December 2019 levels. Nearly half of these are from the North-east Asia markets of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.

“China represents 10 per cent of the total capacity for Changi and, without a clear lifting of outbound China travel restrictions, it will take time for capacity to rebuild to 2019 levels,” he noted.

Although it has recently shifted away from its strict zero-Covid measures, Beijing continues to impose restrictions on international travel.

Travellers looking to fly into the country are still made to undergo quarantine, while its Ministry of Culture and Tourism maintains a ban on travel agencies and online travel companies operating inbound and outbound group tours, as well as flight and hotel packages – a policy that has been in place since Jan 27, 2020.

Individuals are also strongly discouraged from travelling out of the country for non-essential reasons.

Independent analyst Brendan Sobie of Sobie Aviation said that until China completely reopens, it will be virtually impossible for Changi Airport to make a 100 per cent recovery and return to its heyday prior to the pandemic.

“Inbound traffic has been significantly lesser, in part because of China’s restrictions, and I think it’s important to wait and see when it will reopen and how its policies change, as well as whether Singapore is a destination that Chinese tourists would want to travel to.”

Mr Sobie added that Changi’s future outlook also depends on the economy and the sustainability of the pent-up demand from travellers here.

“Demand for international travel here may taper off due to the possibility of a recession, and with most countries having reopened their borders for some time already, the pent-up demand that was unleashed could also start to wane,” he said.