SINGAPORE—Singapore’s Changi Airport Group (CAG) will fully reopen its Terminal 2 (T2) in October, months ahead of the initial projection of early 2024. 

This move comes as the airport’s passenger movements for March crossed 80% of 2019 levels for the first time since the start of the pandemic in 2020, totaling 4.6 million passengers. 

The airport closed T2 for upgrades in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic. However, its southern wing was partially reopened for operations in October 2022 to handle Singapore Airline’s Southeast Asia operations as recovery returned earlier and faster than expected. 

The new T2 annual passenger handling capacity will be increased from 23 million to 28 million, bringing the combined Changi capacity across four terminals to 90 million. 

“We are now poised at the last stretch of recovery, but there is no room for complacency,” Singapore minister of transport S Iswaran said at a CAG event. “As we rebuild to pre-COVID-19 traffic volumes, we are working hard to ensure that Changi has both the physical and operational capacity to support the increase in flights and passengers.” 

CAG’s first quarter (Q1) operating statistics indicates the airport processed 13 million passengers and 74,000 aircraft movements, primarily from Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. Changi’s strong growth markets are North America, Southwest Pacific and Europe, with Greater China passenger flows doubling quarter-on-quarter as China reopened its borders.