SINGAPORE Changi Airport’s budget terminal will be closed on September 25 and flattened to make way for a new Terminal 4.
Construction on the new terminal is slated to begin next year, and is expected to finish by 2017, Changi Airport Group (CAG) said in a statement.
Terminal 4 will reportedly be able to facilitate faster passenger processing and quicker turnarounds, and will not have aerobridges. It will also feature a larger terminal building, with the capacity to handle up to 16 million passengers a year.
In comparison, the existing budget terminal catered to 4.6 million passengers last year.
Airlines currently operating out of the budget terminal, including Berjaya Air, Cebu Pacific, Firefly, South East Asian Airlines and Tiger Airways, will shift operations to Terminal 2 starting September 25.
Aviation executives interviewed by TTG Asia e-Daily during the recent Low Cost Airlines World Asia Pacific 2012 conference in Singapore were unsure if the impending move would bump up airfares for affected airlines, but were certain that operational costs would climb.
Brendan Sorbie, chief representative Southeast Asia, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, said: “The (budget) terminal was originally built for modular expansion. That was CAG’s original vision, and this move is certainly not what airlines expected when they began operating at the terminal.”
“The move to rebuild the terminal could also be accorded to the current terminal’s inability to accommodate wider-body aircraft such as the A330, which more low-cost airlines have begun using in recent years to fly midhaul routes,” he added.
