December was the busiest month with 4.62 million passengers passing through Changi Airport. - ST
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): About 32.2 million passengers passed through Changi Airport in 2022, which is nearly half the passenger traffic for the airport in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic.
A total of 219,000 flights – 57.2 per cent of the 382,000 flights in 2019 – also took off or landed at the airport, according to the latest figures released by Changi Airport Group (CAG) on Tuesday.
December was the busiest month, with 4.62 million passengers passing through Changi Airport. This is 72 per cent of the passenger traffic in December 2019.
In the week between Dec 12 and Dec 18 alone, a little more than a million passengers or 82 per cent of the weekly average traffic in 2019 were handled at the airport.
In December 2022, 25,400 flights – more than three-quarters of the number before the Covid-19 pandemic – landed or took off at Changi Airport.
Changi Airport’s top five passenger markets for the year were Australia, followed by Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Thailand. With South-East Asia seeing a strong recovery in passenger traffic, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Jakarta were Changi Airport’s three busiest routes, similar to 2019.
Among Changi’s top 10 markets, passenger traffic from South Korea in December 2022 exceeded pre-Covid-19 levels. This was partly due to additional capacity from Changi’s airline partners, including new airlines T’way Air and Air Premia on the Singapore-Seoul route, and Scoot plying the new Singapore-Jeju route, said CAG.
Changi Airport flight traffic in the first week of 2023 hit 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with 5,600 flights connecting Singapore to 143 cities in 48 countries and territories worldwide.
Lim Ching Kiat, executive vice-president of air hub and cargo development at CAG, said: “Changi Airport community’s efforts have paid off – the airport is now leading the Asia-Pacific region in travel recovery.
The reopening of Terminals 2 and 4 has helped restore airport capacity to cater to the strong travel demand.
“Notwithstanding near-term challenges such as global economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures, we are confident that we will be able to progressively restore Changi Airport’s connectivity and traffic to pre-Covid-19 levels.”
