CHANGI Airport's latest development is in the new state-of-the-art Terminal 3. Which is built to increase passenger handling capability by up to 22 million. Terminal 3's development included the entire airport structure from landside to screening and airside. The expansion costs around US$1.24 billion.
CHANGI Airport has positioned itself as the main entry point into South-east Asia, facilitating incoming traffic from Europe, Australia the Middle East and North America. Apart from this, the airport has also taken advantage of Singapore's strategic location to provide a good transit point for aircraft flying the Kangaroo route, from Australia to Europe as well as from North America to Australia.
This route has proven to be very profitable for a number of airlines, and CHANGI Airport faces direct competition from Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport and Kuala Lumper International Airport, to serve as a stopover.
The development of Terminal 3 also has an added purpose, ehic is to be the frist operational terminal specifically built to service the gigantic Airbus A380 aircraft. Bigger-than-normal baggage-han-dling equipment and carousels were put in place to ensure fast passenger flow, in addition to A380-specific ground-handling equipment.
CHANGI Airport is also investing in a new runway surveillance system to detect foreign objects on the runway. The system, costing about US$8.5 million, is likely to be installed in the near, future as CHANGI primes itself to be the leading airport in the region in terms of safety and traffic.