Singapore Changi Airport’s Terminal 4 (T4) will go live with new end-to-end check-in and security technology when it officially begins operations on October 31.
Since October 2016, the Changi Airport Group (CAG) began preparing the terminal for opening with table-top exercises to develop standard operating procedures, before progressing to ground deployment exercises, CAG said in a statement.
Singapore’s transport minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed on social media that CAG had conducted “more than 100 trials, involving 2,500 airport staff and 1,500 volunteers from the airport community” since the completion of T4 construction works last December.
CAG will take the next few weeks to complete the last set of trials, according to the group’s executive vice president (airport management), Tan Lye Teck.
Of the nine airlines to operate out of T4, Cathay Pacific Airways and Korean Air will be the first to shift to the new terminal on October 31. The remaining seven – Cebu Pacific, Spring Airlines, Vietnam Airlines and four airlines under the AirAsia Group – will make the move between November 2-7.
T4 will be the country’s first terminal to offer fully automated departure processes for passengers. Termed Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST), the system runs automated check-in kiosks and baggage drop, as well as uses biometric data for immigration and boarding.
For airlines not yet equipped for automated check-in, the 225,000m2 terminal also holds three rows of conventional check-in counters.
T4 will add a capacity of 16 million passengers per annum to Changi Airport, bringing the airport’s total annual handling capacity to 82 million passenger movements.
The next decade could see the airport get its fifth terminal, which is touted to be bigger than Terminals 1, 2 and 3 combined.
