Changi Airport saw 8.9m passengers in first half; aviation workforce nears 80% of pre-Covid levels

CHANGI Airport handled about 8.9 million passengers in the first 6 months of 2022, buoyed by strong traffic over the June school holidays that averaged around 50 per cent of pre-pandemic weekly figures, said Transport Minister S Iswaran in a written reply to parliamentary questions on Tuesday (July 5).

The 8.9 million figure is about 28 per cent of pre-pandemic passenger traffic in the same period in 2019, but almost 10 times that of the same period in 2021.

Changi’s strong passenger traffic recovery is due to the re-opening of Singapore’s borders to all fully-vaccinated travellers and removal of testing requirements in April, as well as many Asia-Pacific countries also re-opening their borders around that time, said Iswaran in response to Member of Parliament Ang Wei Neng’s (West Coast GRC) question on passenger traffic and manpower.

Since the start of 2022, aviation companies have hired about 3,000 workers, bringing the sector’s workforce to about 80 per cent of pre-Covid levels, he added.

The Ministry of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore are working closely with the Changi Airport Group and aviation ecosystem to ramp up the aviation workforce, said Iswaran. He noted that aviation companies have stepped up recruitment efforts, recalling experienced workers and hiring new ones.

On whether the ministry has plans to deal with potential major flight delays and cancellations, Iswaran said that Singapore has not experienced the severe congestions and disruptions faced by some other airports.