Changi Airport Terminal 5 will be able to handle up to 50 million passengers a year, on top of the airport's current capacity of 90 million. - CHANGI AIRPORT GROUP
SINGAPORE: Singapore’s Changi Airport, frequently voted among the world’s best, will finally start work on a massive new terminal next year as it seeks to keep up with an aviation building boom across Asia and the Middle East.
Work on the new Terminal 5, first floated more than a decade ago, will start in the first half of 2025, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said at a dinner last Friday celebrating the 40th anniversary of the nation’s civil aviation authority.
The terminal will be able to handle 50 million more passengers a year, raising the airport’s total capacity to 140 million, and allow connections to more than 200 destinations, up from almost 150 now.
Regional airports from Seoul to Hong Kong and Bangkok are nearing completion, or are well ahead of Changi’s mid-2030s target, for new terminals that will push their annual capacity to over 100 million.
The combined investment of the four airports will top US$36bil.
Asia is seen as one of the biggest growth markets for global aviation in the coming decades, fuelled by the rising wealth of the middle classes in China, India and emerging economies across South-East Asia.
Seoul Incheon, South Korea’s biggest airport, is nearing completion of a US$412mil expansion, lifting its capacity to 106 million people and capping a wider US$11.8bil development over the past 25 years.
Hong Kong will be capable of handling 120 million travellers in the coming years, up from 80 million currently, at a cost of around US$18.2bil.
Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport this year kicked off a US$4.1bil project to more than double annual capacity to 135 million passengers by the end of the decade.
The airports, well-known and well-used for international travel, face increasing competition from a raft of Chinese and Indian hubs – from Mumbai’s new Adani-anchored US$2.1bil project to host 90 million passengers to Guangzhou expanding to cope with 120 million people.
The projects across Asia seem small in comparison to the US$35bil mega airport at Dubai’s Al Maktoum, designed to handle more than 260 million passengers a year in the decades to come. — Bloomberg
