The airport, operated by the Changi Airport Group, is the home base of Singapore Airlines, Singapore Airlines Cargo, SilkAir, Scoot,[6] Tiger Airways, Jetstar Asia Airways, and Valuair. As of May 2013, Changi Airport serves more than 100 airlines operating 6,400 weekly flights connecting Singapore to over 250 cities in about 60 countries and territories worldwide.[7] Until 30 March 2013, the airport served as a secondaryhub for Qantas, which used Singapore as the main stopover point for flights on the Kangaroo Route between Australia and Europe. Qantas is the largest foreign airline to operate from the airport, with over two million passengers annually. An important contributor to the economy of Singapore, more than 28,000 people are employed at the airport, which accounts for over S$4.5 billion in output.
Changi Airport has three passenger terminals with a total annual handling capacity of 66 million passengers. Terminal 1 opened in 1981, followed by Terminal 2 in 1990 and Terminal 3 in 2008. The Budget Terminal, opened on 26 March 2006 and closed on 25 September 2012, will make way for Terminal 4 which will be ready by 2017.[8]
In 2012, the airport handled 51.2 million passengers, a 10% increase over the previous year. This made it the seventh busiest airport by international passenger traffic in the world[9] and the second busiest in Asia by international passenger traffic in 2012. The airport registered 4.92 million passenger movements in December 2012, a growth of 8.6% year-on-year. Changi’s daily record was broken on 22 December 2012, the Saturday before Christmas Day, with 180,400 passengers passing through the 24 hours. In addition to being an