A total of 5.12 million passengers passed through Changi Airport in June, marking the first time since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020 that monthly passenger traffic has crossed the five million mark.
There were also 27,500 flights – 88 per cent of the flights in June 2019 – that took off from or landed at the airport, according to the latest figures released by Changi Airport Group (CAG) on Thursday.
Between April and June 2023, 14.6 million passengers passed through the airport. This is 87 per cent of passenger numbers recorded for the same period in 2019.
In the second quarter of 2023, 81,400 flights – or almost 90 per cent of total flights during the corresponding period in 2019 – landed at or departed from Changi Airport.
The airport’s top five traffic markets for the second quarter of the year were Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.
CAG noted that passenger traffic to and from North-east Asia continued to show steady improvement, rising from around 50 per cent of pre-Covid-19 levels in January this year to 75 per cent by June.
Changi Airport’s efforts to bring in more traffic and rebuild its reach led to the introduction of new routes such as a twice-weekly direct flight to Bhubaneswar, a city in eastern India, on Indian low-cost carrier IndiGo. Flights began on June 3.
In June, Air Canada also announced the resumption of its Vancouver-Singapore service from April 2024, after more than three decades since the airline last operated at Changi. This will be the only non-stop service connecting Canada and Singapore.
At its 2019 peak, Changi Airport had more than 7,400 weekly flights serving more than 170 cities worldwide.
Connectivity is being steadily restored after nearly three years of travel restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
As at July 1, a total of 99 airlines operate over 6,300 weekly scheduled flights at Changi Airport, connecting Singapore to 148 cities.
The Straits Times
