Changi Airport faces long and difficult road to recovery

NOT too long ago, Changi Airport was ranked the seventh busiest airport globally in terms of international passenger traffic. Before the coronavirus struck these shores, Changi served close to 70 million passengers a year. (see amendment note)

These days, it is just a small fraction of that - 400 passenger movements a day, or just 150,000 a year. These are sobering and humbling numbers, for a proud airport that now has a global ranking of 50th in the world. Covid-19 has set the airport back by at least 40 years, all the way to 1981 when Terminal 1 first opened.

There are just 150 aircraft movements each day, down from more than a thousand before the virus reared its ugly head earlier this year. And unlike other much larger countries in the region and beyond, Singapore has no domestic air travel to fall back on that would have given its suffering airport some much-needed CPR.