Passenger traffic at Singapore’s Changi International Airport increased 1.0 per cent in June 2015, with 4.7 million passengers passing through the airport during the calendar month. This growth has been supported by a rebound in traffic to and from Thailand, with passenger movements from its capital, Bangkok, registering robust growth of 30 per cent in the first half of 2015.

In the first six months of 2015, Changi Airport handled 26.6 million passengers, an increase of 0.2 per cent compared to the corresponding period in 2014, while aircraft movements totalled 169,890, one per cent lower than a year before as larger aircraft such as the A380 are being deployed on more routes. The June 2015 performance was the airport’s busiest of the year to date and the passenger growth was complemented by a 1.4 per cent year-on-year rise in aircraft movements.

The rebound in traffic to and from Thailand has seen Bangkok overtake Jakarta to top the list of Changi Airport’s busiest routes for the six-month period. Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Manila complete the top five list. Alongside Bangkok, the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo and the Indian city of Mumbai also registered strong double-digit growth during the half-year, among cities with at least a quarter of a million passengers handled during the period.

More than 100 airlines now operate at Changi Airport, connecting Singapore to over 320 cities in some 80 countries and territories worldwide. With more than 6,700 weekly scheduled flights, an aircraft takes off or lands at Changi roughly once every 90 seconds.

This month low-cost, long-haul operator Scoot launched a six-weekly service to Osaka (with a stop-over in Bangkok for three of the services and a stop-over in Kaohsiung for the remaining three), while on July 14, 2015 Malindo Air started a daily service to the Malaysian city of Ipoh, adding to the existing offering from Firefly and Tigerair. Earlier in the month (on July 7, 2015), Taiwanese carrier EVA Air also increased the frequency of its Taipei - Singapore service from seven to eleven times weekly.