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Capacity at Singapore’s Changi airport is to be almost doubled over the next decade with two terminals in response to booming Asian traffic forecasts.
Asia’s second-busiest airport for international travel is expected to handle about 5% more passengers each year through the next decade.
A fourth terminal, which will be built by 2017 at a cost of $1 billion, will handle 16 million passengers annually. A fifth will be added in the middle of the next decade to handle 50 million travellers, according to Singapore’s transport minister Lui Tuck Yew.
Capacity at the fifth terminal, which Lui described as a “mega” terminal, could increase to 75 million, Bloomberg reported.
Changi currently has capacity to handle of 70 million passengers in the existing three terminals.
The airport will lengthen an existing runway currently operated by the air force for commercial use, adding to the existing two runways.
Changi handled 48.6 million visitors in the first 11 months of last year.
“We need to have capacity ahead of demand,” Lui is reported as saying. “You see rising income levels in Southeast Asia and Asia. You see aviation being increasingly within the reach of a larger segment of the population.”
More than a dozen budget airlines have started across Southeast Asia in the past decade.