SINGAPORE (Commonwealth Union)_ – Travellers can immerse themselves in a towering multimedia digital waterfall display four storeys high and a landscaped garden at the upgraded Changi Airport Terminal 2 (T2), which reopened fully ahead of schedule, on Wednesday.
The centrepiece of the departure hall is nature-inspired, with elements of nature incorporated throughout, including lush green columns and a 14-metre-tall digital display called “The Wonderfall” cascading over large boulders. T2 also introduces a garden that combines digital content, plants and fish called “Dreamscape” in the departure transit area. This offers an immersive experience with an ever-changing “digital sky”, emulating real-time weather conditions outside the terminal, featuring more than 20,000 plants from 100 species, some of which are not commonly found in Singapore.
The garden also includes a fish pond that passengers can stride across on a transparent platform, amid audio recordings of more than 100 calls of birds, insects and other creatures.
A four-minute musical show will be screened across its 892-tile screen every half-hour, with original music composed by Canadian pianist Jean-Michel Blais, CAG said.
With T2’s reopening after its expansion, originally set for completion in 2024, the terminal’s handling capacity has climbed from 23 million to 28 million passengers a year taking Changi Airport’s overall yearly capacity to 90 million passengers.
In terms of handling capacity, T2 is presently the largest of the airport’s four terminals after undergoing 3½ years of engineering and expansion works adding more than 21,000 sq m being the size of about three football fields, to T2.
The northern wing of the terminal started serving passengers on 28th September, ahead of its full reopening on Wednesday.
The revamped terminal serves 16 airlines which connect travellers to 40 cities. The carriers operating there include Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa, the German flag carrier.
New retail and food & beverage stores have opened, including the first South-east Asia pop-up of collectible merchandise store Funko, Baker’s Well, Lynk Fragrances, Café O, and JINJJA Kitchen in the departure hall. Jones The Grocer, Australian artisanal cafe has a deli-style food counter on its ground level, with a bar and restaurant slated to open later in 2023 on its second level in the departure hall.
In the new transit area, travellers will find the Lotte Duty Free Wines & Spirits store equipped with a robot bartender named Toni, a liquor-tasting lounge as well as the Gourmet Garden with panoramic views.
The terminal has received many accolades and awards for its design, user-friendliness, and environmental performance, including the BCA Universal Design Excellence Award and the BCA Green Mark Platinum.
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At the official opening ceremony at T2 on Wednesday, Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean spoke about the significance of capturing the region’s growth in air travel, while citing the resumption of work on Terminal 5, which will add 50 million passengers to Changi Airport’s annual capacity by the mid-2030s.
T2 presently houses 100 automated check-in kiosks and bag-drop machines being nearly double the number before the expansion, as well as a new automated early luggage storage system. This system is able to stow up to 2,400 bags that are checked in early before they are loaded onto departing aircraft, said CAG.
The terminal is also the first at the airport to have automated special assistance lanes for families with young children and people with disabilities and at both its arrival and departure immigration halls.
As at September, passenger traffic at Changi Airport was at about 90% of pre-pandemic levels, with nearly 10 million passengers passing through T2 since May 2022, said CAG.
