As Changi Airport Group (CAG) CEO Lee eow Hiang puts it succinctly, 2015 was a year of two halves with a relatively weak first six months for the airport, followed by a much better second period with added airline capacity stimulating healthier growth. Having said that, the only significant negative month in the first half of the year was January (-3.8%), although February, March and April all reported sub one per cent growth. E Resilient is how CAG describes the overall performance, even though it set new records for both passenger traffic and aircraft movements, handling 55.4m passengers (+2.5%) and 346,330 landings and take-offs (+1.4%) during 2015. y contrast, cargo and airfreight movements remained stable at 1.85m tonnes for the year. The Changi Airport Group has announced that it achieved yet another record for concession sales in 2015, although it did not release any numbers. However, any improvement on last year s performance would mean that CAG must have surpassed the $2bn ($1.4bn) sales total achieved in 2014 from an average of over 120,000 daily transactions in the airport s retail and F& establishments. (Above) DF Group s large T3 duplex duty free liquor and tobacco complex has fast become one of several icons personifying Changi Airport today. MOTHLY AD DAILY RECORD ROKE The year also ended relatively stronger with Changi registering 5.29m passengers (+3.9% on-year), in December the highest monthly traffic total ever achieved over a four week period since the airport opened in 1981. CAG reports that the daily traffic record was also broken on aturday 19 December 2015 when more than 192,000 passengers were processed in 24 hours. More broadly, traffic was actually positive for most of the airport s top 10 country markets, led by Thailand (+12.5%), Vietnam (+7.2%) and China (+7.0%) registering the strongest growth. However, traffic from
Indonesia (-7.3%) and Hong Kong (-1.2%) fell, with passenger traffic to ingapore undoubtedly hit by the strength of the ingapore dollar against some regional currencies. E Changi s busiest routes last year continued to led by Jakarta 3.79m passenger movements, followed by angkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Manila.
E ource: Changi Airport Group. ATACTIG EW AIRLIE angkok was Changi s second fastest growing route amongst all destinations, with at least half a million passengers handled in 2015. CAG said that Colombo, Guangzhou, Mumbai and Tokyo rounded up the top five.
E Changi Airport Group CEO, Lee eow Hiang. Commenting on the overall performance and adding analysis, Changi Airport Group CEO Lee eow Hiang, said: 2015 was a year of two halves for Changi Airport. Following 2014, which saw a number of airline incidents in the region and depressed yields for many regional carriers, we had a relatively weak first six months with flat growth for the period. evertheless, we pressed on to actively woo new airlines and seek growth opportunities with existing ones and our efforts have yielded some positive outcomes. We have seen both full-service and low-cost carriers add capacity in recent months and this has resulted in stronger passenger growth of about 5% for the second half of the year. Going forward, economic uncertainty in many markets, made worse by lacklustre business and consumer confidence, may dampen travel demand in the near term. However, low fuel prices should support airlines profitability.
E ource: Changi Airport Group. EW COECTIO ETALIHED The outlook for Changi is also bolstered by positive developments such as the addition of new city links and airlines in the coming months. These include ingapore Airlines new services to Düsseldorf, Canberra and Wellington in the second half of this year, as well as the arrival of Fiji Airways new direct service from adi in April. Closer to our hub, Asia continues to present exciting growth opportunities, with untapped tourism potential in many parts of the continent, and growing affluence in the emerging economies driving air travel. Here, Changi Airport is well placed to capture future growth with our expanding network, including many secondary cities, to key markets like China, India and Indonesia. We will continue to work closely with our airline partners to establish new connections to develop the ingapore air hub and better serve our passengers.
E hilla Duty Free s Cosmetics & Perfumes duplex opened at Changi Airport in AIRLIE AD ROTE OOT eptember 2015. CAG adds that seven new carriers commenced operations, with the return of Air ew Zealand boosting capacity on the ingapore-auckland route, while the addition of atik Air, Thai Lion Air and Myanmar ational Airlines strengthened Changi s connectivity within outheast Asia. Three other airlines My Indo Airlines, Polar Air Cargo and AirridgeCargo enhanced Changi s cargo network. Interestingly, Changi also opened nine new destinations last year, including four new Chinese city links to Changchun, Quanzhou, anya and Yinchuan. CAG says this strengthens the airport s position as the most connected airport in outheast Asia to China, with a total of 32 city links to the country. In addition, new services also began to Cairns in Australia, Lucknow in India, Luang Prabang in Laos, Pattaya (-Tapao) in Thailand and Cincinnati in the. Last, but not least, Changi also received its 500th est Airport award in ovember 2015 during a year in which it won a total of 28 est Airport awards. ignificantly, these included the prestigious World s est Airport accolade at the 2015 kytrax World Airport Awards an honour achieved for the third year in a row and the sixth time since Changi opened 25 years ago.