Changi aims high in the global market

It has been a year since the formation of the Changi Airport Group (CAG), which operates Singapore Changi, one of the world's busiest international hubs. CAG was spun off from the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). One aim was to separate regulatory from operational functions, but the move also enabled CAG to take a more independent commercial direction in order to increase its global competitiveness and revenues.

Has it worked? From a passenger perspective CAG believes so, given that 2009 was a real test in airports' abilities to hold their own. Executive Vice-President, Corporate, Lye Teck Tan tells Jane's : "We have seen steady growth in passenger movements since August 2009. This enabled us to deliver better-than-expected traffic for the whole of 2009."

Changi closed the year with a 1.3 per cent decline in passengers to 37.2 million, compared with 37.7 million in 2008. For the first six months of 2010, Changi reported passenger traffic of more than 20.2 million - a 17 per cent increase compared with the first half of 2009.

While Airports Council International (ACI) statistics show that passenger volume across Asia grew 4.9 per cent in 2009, worldwide international traffic fell by 3.9 per cent - a better indicator for Changi because it has no domestic services within the tiny island state of Singapore. "Changi has fared well compared to [other airports in] the region," says Tan, but he is wary of the threats posed by fast-growing hubs like Shanghai and Beijing in China, as well as near-double-digit growth of competitors such as Dubai and Kuala Lumpur in 2009.