CHANGI Airport had around 16.5 million passengers passing through in the first quarter of 2024, surpassing the number of passengers that went through it in Q1 2019 by 0.5 per cent, before the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a media release on Thursday (Apr 25), Changi Airport Group (CAG) said that the airport handled about 5.4 million passenger movements each in January and February this year, and around 5.7 million passenger movements in March.

January 2024’s passenger traffic was 96 per cent of the number registered for the same month in 2019.

However, February 2024 and March 2024 logged more passenger movements than in the same months in 2019. February 2024 was 104.3 per cent of the same month then, while March 2024 came in at 101.7 per cent of March 2019.

In Q1 2024, aircraft movements came in at 89,400, which is 94 per cent of the movements compared to Q1 2019.

“Traffic to and from most regions recovered to 2019 levels, or surpassed them. North America has been the strongest performer, with traffic exceeding pre-Covid levels by 25 per cent this quarter,” said the group.

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The top five markets for Singapore’s main airport were China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Thailand.

China came out on top due to a mutual 30-day visa exemption arrangement with the Republic, which was launched on Feb 9, 2024.

Among the top 10 cities, some outperformed Q1 2019 levels by more than 10 per cent. These included Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia; Manila in the Philippines; Taipei in Taiwan; Seoul in South Korea; and Shanghai in China.

As for its cargo numbers, Changi Airport’s airfreight throughput for January to March totalled 475,000 tonnes, increasing 14 per cent compared to Q1 2023.

This marked the first quarter of year-on-year growth after seven consecutive quarters of decline, attributed to strong transhipment performance, especially for flows with China, noted CAG.

For this period, Changi Airport’s top five air cargo markets in alphabetical order were Australia, China, Hong Kong, India and the United States.

In April, two passenger service routes were added to Changi Airport – Air Canada’s Vancouver-Singapore service on Apr 4 and Singapore Airlines : C6L 0%’ Singapore-Brussels service on Apr 5.

On the cargo front, Changi Airport welcomed two new freighter airlines – Shandong Airlines, which started Shenzhen-Singapore services four times a week on Feb 28; and Air Incheon, which launched twice weekly Seoul-Haikou-Singapore services on Mar 5.

Lim Ching Kiat, CAG’s executive vice-president for air hub and cargo development, said the passenger movements of Q1 follow “a steady recovery of travel in the past year”.

“The strong traffic performance this quarter was boosted by the hosting of many music concerts in Singapore and the relaxing of visa requirements between China and Singapore,” he said. “Our goal is to achieve 100 per cent traffic recovery this year.”