Changi Airport handles 16.5 million passengers as Covid pandemic hangover ends

If you’ve opened any social media app in the last three months, I can guarantee you that you have a wall or profile full of images of your friends and acquaintances enjoying an overseas holiday. This is primarily due to how strong the Singapore dollar is now, compared to the USD, Euro, Yen, and Yuan.

This fact also appears in the Q2 2024 operating indicators that the Changi Airport Group posted on 26 July 2024. These indicators show that, from April to June 2024, Changi Airport handled 16.5 million passengers, which is 13.4 percent higher than the previous year and 98.2 percent of passenger movements during the same period in 2019. 

There were 89,300 aircraft movements in the same quarter, up 9.7 percent year-on-year and 94.5 percent compared to the same quarter in 2019.   

So yes, this strongly suggests that Singapore’s aviation industry has almost recovered from the last effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Together with our airline partners, we are striving towards full travel recovery by the end of this year.”

The top five markets in the second quarter of 2024 were Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Australia, and India. Traffic from China doubled from the previous year, a sustained result of visa-free travel. 

As of 1 July, 94 airlines operate over 6,900 weekly scheduled flights at Changi Airport, connecting Singapore to 158 cities in 50 countries and territories worldwide, including the new destinations of Broome, Brussels, Quanzhou and Vancouver. 

Twenty new stores and F&B opened in the four terminals at Changi Airport, while 15 new shops and restaurants opened at Jewel Changi Airport.