CHANGI Airport had 16.8 million passengers passing through its terminals in the third quarter of 2023, up 10 per cent from the year before.
The figure was 97.4 per cent of passengers that went through it in Q3 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, said Changi Airport Group (CAG) on Wednesday (Oct 23).
The group added that aircraft movements totalled to 92,100, up 7.5 per cent from the year-ago period.
North Asia continued to lead the airport’s passenger traffic this quarter, said CAG. The region recorded a 27 per cent growth and almost 50 per cent more passenger traffic year to date, compared with last year.
Changi’s top five passenger markets for the quarter were China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand.
Passenger movements between China and Singapore continued its upward trend. It recorded a 50 per cent year-on-year increase, making China the airport’s top source market, said CAG.
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Meanwhile, traffic from Hong Kong and Japan for Q3 surpassed 2023 levels by more than 20 per cent, added the group.
Lim Ching Kiat, CAG’s executive vice-president for air hub and cargo development, noted that growth in the Chinese, Hong Kong and Japan markets were buoyed by both outbound and inbound travel.
He noted that the group has added four new routes to Jieyang Chaoshan, Linyi, Quanzhou and Taiyuan, in a bid to “expand connectivity”. It has also increased the number of flights to key cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Chongqing.
In Q3, Shanghai witnessed the strongest growth for the second consecutive quarter, as year-to-date traffic more than doubled compared to a year ago, said the group.
Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, London, Melbourne and Tokyo were the other top 10 cities registering year-on-year double-digit growth for the quarter.
This quarter, the airport introduced two new airlines – AirAsia Cambodia, which will begin daily flights to Siem Reap from Nov 9; and Peach Aviation, which will fly daily to Osaka from Dec 5.
On the cargo front, the airport’s airfreight throughput stood at 512,000 tonnes for the quarter. This figure exceeded that in Q3 2023 by 13.5 per cent.
This comes as growth was recorded across all cargo flows – exports, imports and transshipment – led by improvements in cargo flows between Singapore and China, as well as the US.
Australia, China, Hong Kong, India and the US were Changi’s top five air cargo markets in Q3.
As at Oct 1, 96 airlines were operating more than 7,000 weekly scheduled flights at Changi Airport, connecting Singapore to 161 cities in 50 countries and territories worldwide, CAG said.
