Singapore’s Changi Airport said on Friday (13 March) passenger movements in February fell 32.8 percent compared to last year while aircraft movements declined by 12.3 percent. Airfreight throughput rose 7.6 percent to 147,000 tonnes for the month. The spike in airfreight throughput in February was largely due to urgent fulfilment of backlogs after a prolonged factory shutdown in China and the extra leap-year day.
Changi officials said air travel demand continued to be impacted by the COVID-19 coronavirus. For the month of February, all regions except Africa recorded declines. Travel to Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia was impacted the most, with 1.5 million fewer passenger movements compared to the same period last year. Traffic to major travel markets declined across the board including China (-92 percent), Hong Kong (-75 percent), South Korea (-46 percent), Taiwan (-38 percent) and Thailand (-33 percent).
For the first two months of 2020, passenger traffic at Changi Airport fell 12.9 percent to 9.40 million while aircraft movements totalled 59,700, a decrease of 4.7 percent compared to the same period last year. As of 9 March, due to various flight cancellations, the available seat capacity at Changi Airport for the month of March 2020 has declined by close to 30 percent, compared to what was originally scheduled.
