India Fourth-largest Air Passenger Market for Singapore's Changi Airport

India holds the fourth position among the top five passenger markets for Singapore's Changi Airport. Last year, the aerodrome handled 219,000 flights and 32.2 million passengers, as the nation was making its way out from the pandemic-struck situation in 2021. Talking of the top-rank-holder, Australia is the airport's largest passenger market, followed by Malaysia, Indonesia, India and Thailand, a press release by the Changi Airport Group (CAG) said. It further revealed, a total of 219,000 flights, 57.2 per cent of the 382,000 flights in 2019, took off or landed at the airport, according to the latest figures.

About 32.2 million passengers passed through Changi Airport in 2022, constituting nearly half the passenger traffic for the airport in 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic. Changi Airport flight traffic, in the first week of 2023, hit 82 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, with 5,600 flights connecting Singapore to 143 cities in 48 countries and territories worldwide, according to the report. "Changi Airport community's efforts have paid off,  the airport is now leading the Asia Pacific region in travel recovery," Lim Ching Kiat, Executive Vice President of Air Hub and Cargo Development at CAG, said.

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"Notwithstanding near-term challenges such as global economic uncertainty and inflationary pressures, we are confident that we will be able to progressively restore Changi Airport's connectivity and traffic to pre-Covid levels,” he added. The airport re-established its link to all South Asian cities to the pre-pandemic level last year and added Pune to its network.

Besides, India has become the third-largest aviation market in the world and is growing rapidly, with the number of airports increasing to 147 from just 74 in 2014, President Droupadi Murmu said on Tuesday. "Up to 2014, the number of airports in the country was 74, it has now increased to 147. Today India has become the third-largest aviation market in the world. The UDAN Yojana has played an important role in this regard," she said.

With agency inputs