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Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan revealed that Changi Airport’s S$985 million Terminal 4 (T4) is set to open on 31 October 2017 following its completion in December 2016, reported Channel NewsAsia.
“After endless rounds of testing and fine-tuning, we are ready to open T4. Another big step forward in our journey as a global airhub,” he said in a Facebook post on Wednesday (6 September).
The newest terminal underwent over 100 trials involving 1,500 volunteers and 2,500 airport staff since it was completed last December, but Changi Airport Group noted that preparations for flight operations at T4 began in October 2016.
“This began with table-top exercises to develop the standard operating procedures, and later progressed to ground deployment exercises to familiarise staff with the new terminal and processes,” it said in a statement.
Members of the public and volunteers from the airport industry also role-played as airline passengers to test important systems and processes like the Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST) system.
This system features automated check-in kiosks for retrieving flight bookings as well as for printing bag tags and boarding passes. It also functions as baggage drops, immigration clearance and boarding gates, which are all automated and equipped with facial recognition technology that matches passenger identities with photos in their passports.
Aside from the FAST system, Changi Airport Group also plans to leverage new technologies for security, housekeeping, baggage handling and for managing shops — areas that account for 80 percent of the airport’s total staff.
Furthermore, the terminal’s automated systems are lauded as a game changer, enabling the two-storey T4 to accommodate around 16 million passengers per annum and boost Changi Airport’s overall capacity to 82 million passengers per year, despite being the airport’s smallest terminal at just half the size of Terminal 3.