CHANGI Airport passenger movements came in at around 5.3 million in February, 4.3 per cent higher than pre-pandemic levels for the month, statistics from Changi Airport Group (CAG) released on Wednesday (Mar 13) showed.

This was the first time that the airport’s monthly passenger traffic was higher than in the corresponding month before the pandemic.

The February passenger traffic was also 33.7 per cent higher than that in the same month last year.

In January, Changi Airport logged 5.4 million passenger movements, up 24.3 per cent year on year, but still 4 per cent lower than pre-pandemic.

For the whole of 2023, Changi Airport handled 58.9 million passengers, down from 68.3 million passengers pre-pandemic.

Air-freight movements were also up in February, compared to the pre-pandemic period. There were 143,000 tonnes of air freight handled that month, higher than the pre-pandemic corresponding month by 4.8 per cent.

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Changi Airport’s published data does not show the breakdown of monthly freight movements for the past years. It is therefore unclear whether the airport had higher freight movements in a particular month when borders were closed and e-commerce boomed, than pre-pandemic.

Singapore welcomed 1.44 million travellers in February, up 50 per cent year on year, said the Singapore Tourism Board.

Last month, mainland Chinese travellers reclaimed their position as Singapore’s top source market for tourists. There were 326,970 arrivals, 825.9 per cent higher than in the year before.

Indonesia took second place with 190,760 arrivals (21.9 per cent higher year on year); Malaysia, with 100,200 arrivals (up 13.8 per cent year on year) was third.

Singapore Airlines (SIA) : C6L 0% and its budget arm Scoot operate flights to and from 27 airports in mainland China. Data from aviation analytics firm Cirium for February put Scoot’s seat share for non-stop flights from China to Singapore at 25.9 per cent; SIA’s seat share for these flights was 21.3 per cent.

Ranking behind both airlines was China Eastern Airlines, which had 15.2 per cent of seat share for February, noted Alton Aviation Consultancy managing director Mabel Kwan, who drew on Cirium’s data.

SIA and Scoot do not have overlapping routes, except for the Guangzhou-to-Singapore leg.

SIA is more focused on flights from seven major business cities; these include Beijing and Shanghai, where it offers a lot more capacity through higher frequencies and with wide-body aircraft, Kwan noted.

Scoot serves secondary cities with lower frequency, and uses narrow-body aircraft.