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Changi airport August visitor numbers rise

By Ven Sreenivasan, The Business Times | Thu, Sep 17 2009

They suggest traffic downtrend may have bottomed out

Changi airport August visitor numbers rise

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CALL it a green shoot or a blip, but after a year-long slump, Changi Airport group recorded its first first year-on-year rise in traffic last month.

Although operator Changi Airport Group refused to confirm the good news – saying that the official figures will not be released until later this month – BT understands that the August numbers were strong enough to suggest that the downtrend in passenger and cargo traffic that began during the second half of last year may have bottomed out.

“Last month’s numbers for passengers and freight are very encouraging,” a source told BT.

After a bumper year in 2008 when 37.7 million passengers passed through its gates, traffic through Changi tumbled 7.5 per cent to 17.3 million passengers in the first half of this year, hit by the global downturn and H1N1 flu. As of July, the passenger tally was 19.8 million.

The only time the airport has suffered a bigger drop in traffic was in 2003 when another health scare, Sars, emptied planes. Passenger numbers in the first six months of that year dipped 25 per cent year-on-year to 10.6 million.

Serving more than 80 international airlines flying to more than 190 cities in 60 countries, Changi handles more than 4,500 arrivals and departures weekly.

It has been hit hard by the economic crisis, as airlines have slashed services to keep afloat.

In the past, the airport’s traffic numbers has largely mirrored those of its biggest customer – Singapore Airlines. Yesterday, SIA reported that the number of passengers it carried in August decreased 16 per cent over the same month last year to 1.4 million.

So the pick up in Changi’s traffic numbers this time around could be due to a pick up in traffic by other carriers, predominantly point-to-point low-cost players.

The International Air Transport Association has also said that there are signs of improvement in the global aviation operating environment, but warns that the financial numbers will be bad.

In an announcement made in Washington yesterday, the airline industry organisation predicted that global airline losses will hit US$11 billion (S$15.6 billion) this year – US$2 billion worse than the previously projected US$9 billion loss.

Industry revenues for the year are expected to fall by US$80 billion, or 15 per cent, to US$455 billion compared with 2008 levels.

This article was first published in The Business Times