Changi Airport will see the first commercial flights arrive at and leave Terminal 4 in the coming weeks, as part of the final phases of trials ahead of the new terminal's official opening, Changi Airport Group (CAG) said on Wednesday (Jun 21).
The trials will involve selected flights by airlines that will be operating from the terminal. These include Cathay Pacific, Cebu Pacific, Korean Air, Spring Airlines, Vietnam Airlines as well as the four AirAsia airlines. Flight trials were conducted recently with military chartered flights.
In recent months, volunteers have played the role of passengers to test airport systems and processes. These include the suite of Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST) options, security screening, GST refund, baggage reclaim, ground transport, way-finding, passenger and baggage transfer and vehicular movements in the apron.
All gates are equipped with facial recognition technology. Passengers' identities are verified by matching their faces with their photos in passport. Altogether, more than 100 trials have been conducted, involving over 2,000 volunteer participants and 1,000 airport staff.
Two airlines moving to T4, Cathay Pacific and AirAsia, have been providing FAST options to their passengers at Terminal 1, where they currently operate, since February this year. The response has been positive with more than half of the airlines’ passengers choosing the FAST option in the past three months.
"Our key focus is to implement all the operational readiness trials, and that has started since last year in October," said Ms Poh Li San, CAG's Vice President of its T4 Programme Management Office to Channel News Asia.
"To date we have completed more than 100 trials, involving more than 2,000 volunteers who came to participate, and more than 1,000 airport staff who did the trials with us."
Source : Channel News Asia | The Financial
