CHANGI AIRPORT WELCOMES 3.4 MILLION INDIAN PASSENGERS IN 2015
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Singapore Changi Airport scaled new benchmarks for passenger traffic and aircraft movements, handling a record 55.4 million passengers and about 346,300 landings and take-offs in 2015. Registering 3.44 million Indian passenger movements, India remains Changi Airport’s seventh largest country market. On the cargo front, airfreight movements remained stable at 1.85 million tonnes for the year.
Mumbai was Changi’s fourth fastest growing route (+8.2 per cent on-year) among destinations with at least half a million passengers handled in 2015. Bangkok, Colombo and Guangzhou took the top three spots. In December alone, Mumbai saw a close to 11 per cent increase in traffic.
The addition of a new service to Lucknow increased the total number of Changi’s city links to India to 13, strengthening the airport’s position as the most connected airport in Southeast Asia to India. In terms of traffic, the top five Indian cities for Changi Airport are Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Tiruchirappalli.
Changi Airport also identified India as fourth amongst the top five nationalities by concession sale in 2015, with 5.9 per cent of retail sales (+4.2 per cent on-year) being contributed by Indian passenger traffic during the year. The annual data also reveals that favourite buys for Indian passengers last year were liquor and tobacco, perfumes and cosmetics followed by confectionaries, electronics and jewellery.
December 2015 was the busiest month for Changi Airport in terms of retail sales, with international brands like Zara and Samsung launching their first airport stores in Singapore and other attractive promotions like Star Wars plush toys redemption is adding to the surge in the number of passengers.