Changi Airport welcomed its 60 millionth passenger for this year yesterday, a first for the airport in its 36-year history.

The 353 passengers on Scoot Flight TR7 arriving from Gold Coast, Australia, were treated to champagne, goodie bags and a buffet when they touched down at Changi Airport Terminal 2 yesterday afternoon.

Six passengers were selected to take part in a quiz, in which they stood to win prizes such as leather goods and jewellery.

All six also won a pair of return air tickets to six Scoot destinations.

One passenger, 45-year-old housewife Ang Bee Leng, clinched first place in the competition, winning a trip to Jaipur, India, as well as a suite of Apple products, including the iPhone X.

Changi Airport Group (CAG) chief executive officer Lee Seow Hiang noted that the airport’s passenger traffic had increased 10 per cent since 2012, when it crossed the 50-million-passengers mark.

Read also: Changi travelers to get new Singapore-Warsaw link from May

Mr Tan Lye Teck, CAG executive vice-president for airport management, noted factors such as the increase in budget carriers had led to passenger traffic growth in recent years. “We’ve been putting a lot of things in place to better cater to the growth in passengers in the years to come,” he said, pointing to upcoming projects such as Jewel, the commercial development scheduled to open in 2019.

Changi Airport – the sixth busiest airport in the world for international passenger traffic – registered 5.17 million passengers last month, marking a year-on-year growth of 8.1 per cent.

In a Facebook post, Minister for Transport Khaw Boon Wan congratulated Changi Airport for hitting the 60-million-passengers milestone, describing the expansion of Singapore’s airport infrastructure to cope with growing demand as a “giant bet”.

“We are now executing another and even bigger bet, the construction of T5 (Terminal 5) and the comprehensive development of Changi East,” he said, referring to the plan to double Changi Airport to more than 2,000ha by 2030, to allow it to handle up to 150 million passengers a year.

The new terminal will ensure the continuing relevance of Changi Airport, said Mr Khaw, adding that the Republic is confident of the continuing growth of civil aviation in Asia.

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