Aviation Festival Asia 2018: introducing Guest of Honour — Lim Ching Kiat

Following my piece introducing SimpliFlying Innovations Lab and the Aviation Festival hogging the schedules of aviation professionals in Singapore next week. Today I take a look at the festival’s Guest of Honour — Lim Ching Kiat.

Kicking off the festival with his opening statements, Lim Ching Kiat is the managing director for Air Hub Development in Changi Airport Group. He is responsible for Airline Development, Passenger Development and Cargo & Logistics Divisions.

An important position for any airport, but seeing as Changi Airport is one of the biggest transport hubs on the planet and is consistently declared to be the World’s Best Airport by Skytrax, Ching Kiat’s role has particular significance.

Before joining Changi Airport Group Ching Kiat, alumnus of the prestigious Wharton Business School, worked for information technology consultants Booz Allen & Hamilton; Asia Pacific Breweries; Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and GIC Special Investments.

In addition to being World’s Best Airport five years on the trot – Changi reached another milestone at the end of last year when, for the first time, passenger traffic hit 60 million mid-December 2017, topping out at 62.2 million.

Displaying an impressive with way with words, not to mention his competitive edge, Ching Kiat said this of the achievement, in a recent piece in the Malay Mail

“Aviation and economic cycles, they go up and down. While the winds are strong now, it is very hard to predict, (in) one to two years’ time, how it would be like. While the winds are strong, let’s be aggressive and get as much of the traffic now.”

With Changi’s new Terminal 5, on course to open in the next 10 years or so, as well as the reopening of Jewel Changi Airport next year – which will push Terminal 1 capacity up to 24 million a year, these are exciting times for Changi Airport, and I can’t wait to find out what he has say about the Aviation Festival Asia 2018.

Still craving more information, join me next time for my interview with festival panel host, HappyOrNot APAC director, Chris Armstrong. And, make sure to head over to Aviation Festival Asia’s website for more details on the opening day’s agenda, and check out simpliflying.com for how to register at the Innovations Lab.