Singapore, Changi Airport's Fifth Terminal Opens. It Will Be as Big as Fiumicino Alone

Singapore. Construction work began today on the fifth terminal at Changi Airport, an operation with which the Asian airport and its city want to capitalize on the consolidated recovery of air travel after the pandemic. The airport will also integrate a third runway, currently in use by the armed forces, by 2030.

Five years later, the local flag carrier, Singapore Airlines, will consolidate its operations in the new terminal. The numbers are staggering. In the initial phase, the nascent terminal will be able to handle 50 million passengers per year, as many as those that passed through Rome Fiumicino in 2024. Changi is currently the fourth largest airport in the world, with a capacity of 90 million passengers per year, and a total traffic of 67.7 million people in 2024.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, the equatorial city-state's Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said the airport aims to connect the metropolis to more than 200 cities by the mid-2030s, up from about 170 cities it has reached today.

The government had put the terminal project on hold for two years in 2020 due to the collapse of air travel caused by the pandemic. It later revisited it to meet changing travel needs post-COVID. As is well known, the recovery of air travel in Asia after the pandemic has been slower than in the rest of the world due to China's delay in resuming international travel.

But IATA now predicts that passenger numbers in the Asia-Pacific region will double by 2043, with an annual growth rate of 5.1%, higher than those forecast in Europe and North America.

The terminal is part of a 1,080-hectare Changi East development project that will also include cargo facilities and other airport infrastructure.

Airport operator Changi Airport Group announced this month that it has awarded contracts for airside infrastructure and substructure works worth S$4.75 billion ($3.6 billion).

Other Asian air hubs are also expanding their capacity to meet future demand. In November, Hong Kong International Airport, the world’s busiest cargo hub, began operating three runways to increase the number of flights it can handle.