Host Welcome: Changi Airport Group

Transcript

Ching Kiat Lim:Good morning, everyone. Thank you for CAPA for hosting this event again after two years, and Changi is quite happy to help co-host this event and welcome our friends back. So personally, I'm very happy to see many old familiar faces here in this room, and especially for our friends who came in from overseas, welcome to Singapore. Happy to have you here. Again, I have a short presentation today as a welcome presentation. I give you an update on what's happening in Changi Airport right now. So our traffic, as we speak, is about 65% of pre-COVID of 2019 levels. As you can see, I think the uplift came from November-December last year when the vaccinated travel lanes were launched, and in April we opened our borders completely with minimum rules. So the traffic has been Moving up steadily. Looking forward at the northern winter season, the flights are still coming in very healthily, so we hope to surpass these levels, continue to do that steadily. Okay, just some—I think many of you will be interested. Here's our top ten markets. So on the left-hand side is what the picture looks like before COVID Right-hand side is today, the top ten. So same same but different. Some of the countries, of course, like what Adrian explained earlier, China, Japan, Hong Kong, they are out of the top 10 for now, but we expect them to come back in quite strong. In their place, you have markets like Korea, you have US and UK coming into Changi's top 10. In fact, I think it's quite an unusual situation right now. For example, for Singapore-US traffic, it has already surpassed pre-COVID levels. We have never had such High frequencies into the U.S. as we have before. So let's let's see the situation will continue to be quite fluid of now, but I think we are heading back to normalcy to pre-COVID level. Like Indonesia, which has always been our number one market, is slowly moving its way up the charts to take the number one position again. As you saw in the video earlier, I think during the last two years was quite tough for Changi Airport. I think for many people in the room as well. So we together as a community, we work hard to make our airport, Air Hub, back on its foot again. But actually, special mention to the airlines who actually stayed with us throughout the 2 tough years. Another mention is for new airlines. Actually, during this period, there were new airlines who started with us. We know it's not easy to justify a new flight and there's investments involved. So especially a big thank you to the 17 airlines who joined us in the last 2 years. I think many of you are in the room. So we are committed, my team is committed to working with you to improve your service here and to grow your business here in Changi. We have also seen new links, believe it or not. While our traffic is suspended, I think there were new destinations that have come at Changi Airport. Jeju, New Caledonia, Nouméa, Vancouver, Bahrain, Riyadh, and Pune will be coming soon in December. So we look forward to working closely with these airlines to help market the new routes. So the last point I want to leave with you, I think this month has been a busy month for us at Changi Airport. We reopened Terminal 4 and we opened more parts of Terminal 2. So all 4 terminals now are open. We are ready. Our sunflower gardens are ready. Jewel is ready. So just, we will work with you to get all your flights back and then grow beyond COVID level. So I wish all of you a fruitful conference for these 2 days, and for overseas guests, enjoyable stay in Singapore. Thanks.

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