Changi’s Terminal 5: The Mega-Hub That Leaves KLIA in the Dust

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong picked up the shovel on 14 May 2025 and officially kicked-off construction of Terminal 5 (T5).

Once the first phase opens in the mid-2030s, the single terminal will welcome ~50 million passengers a year, nudging Changi’s total capacity to a jaw-dropping 140 million – nearly triple what KLIA handles today. Singapore is literally future-proofing its hub status while KLIA is still patching leaks in 1990s plumbing.

What's Coming?

The reclaimed site is big enough to swallow downtown Toa Payoh, and its three sub-terminals will be knitted together by automated people-movers that keep connections painless even at mega-hub scale.

A once-military third runway—already lengthened to 4 kilometres—is being wired into the civilian network, giving Changi Heathrow-level movement capacity without the weather dramas.

Crucially, Singapore Airlines and Scoot will finally live under one roof, trimming minimum-connection-times and unlocking still more city pairs; the stated target is over 200 worldwide links by the mid-2030s, up from about 170 today.

Climate resilience is baked in, too: critical systems sit on higher plinths, and the building can be “segmented” during pandemics—forward-thinking we wish our own regulators would even talk about, let alone fund.

Meanwhile in Sepang…

Our aerotrain collapsed in March 2023 and still won’t pull out of the workshop until somewhere in Q3 2025 after a carousel of contractors, cancellations and ministerial scoldings.

As if that weren’t enough, the RM1.1 billion baggage-handling upgrade meant to save KLIA from carousel chaos is now running up to 18 months because the consortium underestimated the complexity of working in a live terminal.

Travellers don’t care about excuses— they just remember sprinting for buses in tropical downpours while their bags play hide-and-seek.

Why does any of this matter to Malaysians?

Because connectivity is currency. Every new city-pair Changi locks down diverts tourists, exporters and high-value talent away from Kuala Lumpur. Boardrooms pay attention to how an airport feels: seamless transfers, reliable ground links and a sense that the operator actually sweats the details.

Right now, KLIA’s narrative is one of broken trains, patchwork lounges and endless “coming soon” press releases, while Singapore is pouring concrete for a terminal that alone will out-handle our entire airport, although it's not surprising since MAHB can't even play the real estate game fairly.

Final Thoughts

Changi’s Terminal 5 isn’t simply a gleaming new concourse—it’s a declaration that Singapore intends to own the narrative of Asian aviation for the next generation.

By the time its first wide-body pushes back in the mid-2030s, the city-state will enjoy the scale of Atlanta, the efficiency of Tokyo, and the passenger experience of a five-star hotel lobby—all wrapped into one connected ecosystem.

That ambition should jolt everyone north of the Causeway, because the gap between what Singapore is building and what KLIA is still fixing has gone from uncomfortable to absurd.