SINGAPORE – Changi Airport will ramp up efforts to establish direct flights to new destinations over the next decade as it prepares for the completion of Terminal 5 (T5) by the mid-2030s.
Among the potential new destinations are Banda Aceh and Banjarmasin in Indonesia, Hai Phong and Da Lat in Vietnam, Almaty in Kazakhstan, and Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
Speaking during a media interview on July 13, Lim Ching Kiat, executive vice-president for air hub and cargo development at Changi Airport Group (CAG), said most of the new routes will be in the Asia-Pacific, which is expected to account for the bulk of passenger traffic over the next decade.
Describing these underserved cities as “white spots” with little air connectivity to Singapore, Lim said they could generate strong demand for leisure travel, business travel or both, particularly if they are provincial capitals with sizeable populations that have significant spending power.
Urumqi and Hohhot in China, as well as Lucknow and Jaipur in India, are also among the possible destinations that Changi Airport is working to establish direct flight connections with.
At present, 85 per cent of flights operating at Changi Airport are to destinations in the Asia-Pacific.
Lim also identified Central and Eastern Europe as regions where the airport needs to “plant seeds” and “cultivate relationships”, noting that there are currently no direct flights between Singapore and many destinations in the two regions.
Beyond opening new routes, Changi Airport also wants to increase flight frequencies to existing destinations.
These include Nadi in Fiji, which is currently served by two flights in each direction every week, and Paro in Bhutan, with three flights each way every week.
The airport also plans to increase the number of flights to Noumea in New Caledonia, currently served by two to three flights in each direction every week.
For such destinations, Lim said the airport hopes to increase the flight frequencies gradually to daily services as a form of “steady equilibrium” so that travellers can enjoy greater convenience.
On Changi Airport’s projected growth in 2026, Lim said passenger traffic growth was “more muted” between April and June, following the outbreak of the Middle East conflict on Feb 28.
In the first three months of 2026, there were 17.6 million passengers, a 2.3 per cent increase from the same period in 2025, even as travel between Singapore and the Middle East declined due to the Iran war.
However, in April, there were 5.73 million passengers, a 0.9 per cent decrease from the same month in 2025. In May, the airport handled 5.68 million passengers, down 2.4 per cent from the same month in 2025.
Lim said it is “too early to tell how things will pan out” for the rest of the year, but added that the airport will work hard towards achieving stronger growth in passenger traffic than in 2025.
Fuel prices around the world have spiked since the outbreak of the Iran war, amid disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global oil and gas supplies.
Lim said it is difficult for airports or governments to cover the higher costs of fuel, but Changi Airport is working with airlines to reduce other operating costs, such as by shortening aircraft turnaround time.
He added that the airport also supports airlines in securing suitable slot timings for flights and marketing new flights together.
Recounting lessons from the Middle East conflict, Lim said Changi Airport has realised the importance of diversifying its traffic sources, traffic flows and airline partnerships across different regions.
For instance, Ethiopian Airlines flights between Singapore and Europe via Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and Turkish Airlines flights from the city-state to Europe via Istanbul, provided alternative routes when the airspace in the Middle East was closed.
From March to June, airlines launched more than 500 additional flights between Singapore and cities such as London, Munich, Paris, Perth and Sydney to fill the void left by the cancellation of Middle Eastern carriers’ services between Asia and Europe.
Lim noted that the flight disruptions have since tapered down to a lower level.
The new T5 will be completed in the mid-2030s, allowing Changi Airport to serve 140 million passengers yearly – over 55 per cent more than its present capacity of 90 million.
Together with the wider Changi East development, T5 will nearly double the airport’s size.
Looking beyond the mid-2030s, Lim said that with more economic centres being developed in Africa, there will be a need for more flight connections with the continent at a later stage.
As an example of how fast-growing destinations can become important markets, he cited Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, which has seen strong demand for air travel among business, religious and leisure travellers. Changi Airport has been in discussions with several airlines to establish more connections to the city.
In the longer term, as ultra-long-haul flight technologies improve beyond the 10-year timeframe, Lim believes that Changi Airport should prioritise direct flights to more cities in the United States, including Boston and Chicago, as well as Toronto in Canada.
Following that, the airport can look into non-stop flight connections to cities in South America, he added.
Meanwhile, Lim said layovers at Changi have become longer, with more than 50 per cent of transit passengers stopping over for at least three hours.
He attributed the trend to the maturing of travel patterns as more passengers head to secondary and emerging cities with less frequent flights.
He said the airport has increased the number of its free city tours to seven each day for travellers with at least 5½ hours of layover time and added new destinations to the tours, such as Sentosa, the Singapore River and Marina Bay.
Since the resumption of the tours in April 2023 after the Covid-19 pandemic, more than 230,000 transit passengers have signed up.
On the airport’s efforts to expand its flight network, Lim said that establishing a city link marks the start of a new phase, rather than the end of work.
“It is only the beginning of another milestone,” he said. “It’s like a garden. You’re always not satisfied. You always want to make sure your plants grow very healthily.”
Mayur Patel, the commercial and industry affairs leader for Asia-Pacific at aviation data consultancy OAG Aviation, believes that the connections to the South-east Asian cities will materialise more quickly.
As these short- to medium-haul journeys can be operated by narrow-body jets and low-cost carriers, airlines such as Scoot, AirAsia and Vietjet may express interest in running the routes, he added.
Similarly, flights to Lucknow and Jaipur are likely to be launched in the near term, given the growing appetite of Indian carriers, he said.
Patel estimates that the flights to Hai Phong, Da Lat, Lucknow and Jaipur could materialise within the next one to two years, while those to Banda Aceh and Banjarmasin may take two to three years.
In comparison, routes to Central Asia “present a more complex picture”, he said, as airlines may prefer tried-and-tested routes over investing in new markets amid current aircraft supply shortages.
Patel said routes to Almaty and Tashkent are likely to take a longer time to launch because they depend on fleet deployment decisions and bilateral air services agreements.
For Urumqi and Hohhot, which are geographically challenging, the routes are likely to require Chinese airlines to operate them, making their launch dependent on slot availability in both China and Singapore, as well as airline scheduling priorities.
