Singapore has announced plans to resume work on a fifth terminal at Changi airport.

The 50-million capacity Terminal 5 had been placed on hold in June 2020, following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent downturn in demand for air travel.

But speaking at the Changi Aviation Summit this week, Singapore’s Transport Minister S Iswaran said that “Given the current and projected recovery in air travel demand, we have a renewed impetus to secure our infrastructural capacity for growth”.

“We have taken the opportunity of the two-year hiatus to comprehensively review the T5 design to make it more modular and flexible, and enhance its resilience and sustainability,” said Iswaran.

Construction work is now expected to commence in two or three years time, with a completion date of the middle of the next decade.

The airport’s Terminal 5 is planned as part of the wider 1,080-hectare Changi East project.

Passenger numbers at state-owned Singapore Changi airport fell dramatically from around 68 million in 2019, to under 12 million in 2020 and just over three million in 2021.

But Iswaran said that traffic at the hub airport had now reached 40 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

This week IATA’s director general Willie Walsh – also speaking at the Changi Aviation Summit – urged Asia-Pacific states to ease border measures to accelerate the region’s recovery from Covid-19.

“Asia-Pacific is playing catch-up on restarting travel after Covid-19, but there is growing momentum with governments lifting many travel restrictions,” said Walsh. “The demand for people to travel is clear.”

IATA: “Asia-Pacific is playing catch-up on restarting travel after Covid-19”

changiairport.com