Singapore’s budget terminal to be demolished
The budget terminal at Singapore’s Changi airport will be demolished this year and replaced with a new, larger passenger terminal.
Changi Airport Group (CAG) announced today that operations at the low-cost terminal will end on 25 September 2012, and that the site will be cleared to make way for the construction of a larger terminal building. The new building, to be known as Terminal 4, will have a capacity of 16 million passengers per year.
CAG revealed that the new T4 will not have any aerobridges, to enable the “quick turnaround of aircraft”. It will feature however, a range of retail and food & beverage outlets not present at the existing budget terminal.
To facilitate the construction of T4, airlines currently operating in the budget terminal will move their operations to Changi’s Terminal 2 from 25 September. The affected airlines are Berjaya Air, Cebu Pacific, Firefly, SEAIR and Tiger Airways.
Singapore’s budget terminal handled more than 4.6 million passenger movements in 2011, while Changi airport catered to a total of 46.5 million. Considering that the airport’s existing capacity is 70 million passengers per year, there is still room to accommodate future growth. CAG said however, that it is “planning ahead to ensure there is capacity to handle further increase in traffic demand”.
Over the past decade, passenger traffic at Changi airport has increased at an annual growth rate of 5.2%, but last year that growth rate doubled to 10.7%.
Construction of Terminal 4 will begin in 2013 and the new terminal is expected to be ready by 2017.