Singapore Changi Airport handled 4.06m passengers (+6%) in December 2010 boosting its 12-month total to a record breaking 42m-plus passengers (+13%) and surpassing the previous annual record of 37.7m passenger movements recorded in 2008. Both monthly and daily records were also broken in December 2010.

A new daily traffic record was set on December 18 – the Saturday before Christmas Day – with 146,000 passenger movements during 24 hours. Changi’s busiest day in 2009 was December 19 when the airport handled 140,000 passengers.

Changi Airport’s strong performance in 2010 was underpinned by robust traffic growth to and from Southeast and Northeast Asia. Buoyed by the rapid expansion of low-cost carriers, passenger traffic to these two regions increased by more than +18% during the year. Traffic to and from South Asia and the Americas also enjoyed double-digit growth.

LOW-COST DEMAND UP
Demand for low-cost travel continued to grow strongly. Passenger movements on low-cost carriers (LCCs) grew +33% while LCC flights increased by +22%. For 2010, LCCs accounted for 22.4% of passenger movements (2009: 19.1%) and 26.3% of flights (2009: 23.6%) at Changi.

In terms of passenger traffic, there was little change to the rankings of the top 10 routes from Changi, with Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Bangkok and Manila occupying the top five positions. 

Among sectors with at least half a million passengers, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Mumbai, Penang and Phuket registered the strongest growth, reflecting the addition of capacity on these routes during the year.

In 2010, nine new airlines commenced operations at Changi Airport. They include regional passenger carriers such as Philippines’ Airphil Express and Hainan Airlines, and freighters such as China Cargo Airlines and Malaysia’s Transmile Air.

Fourteen new city links were added to Changi’s network. Of these, four are in China – Shantou and Guilin (served by Jetstar Asia), Hefei (Hainan Airlines) and Qingdao (China Eastern Airlines). In addition, 28 weekly services were introduced to Tokyo’s Haneda airport – by ANA, Japan Airlines and Singapore Airlines – in addition to existing services to Narita Airport.