On Friday (June 23), Changi Airport’s soon-to-be-opened Terminal 4 welcomed its first commercial flight: AirAsia. The AK9723 plane, which arrived from Kuala Lumpur at 9:10pm, carried 180 passengers to the new terminal for the first time. When the return flight, AK9722, headed back to KL around 9:50pm, 166 passengers were on board.
Since the terminal isn’t officially open yet, travelers weren’t able to shop or get a bite to eat as businesses were closed. Instead, the departing passengers were given complimentary access to arcade machines and neck massages, said The Straits Times.
In a bid to switch things up from the other three terminals, T4 features a start-to-end automated system (alongside its manual counters) from check-in to immigration clearance to boarding, as well as a facial recognition system to take snapshots of passengers at various stations.
These were all tested out by the AirAsia passengers, some of whom even took selfies at the shiny new terminal — because why not, when you’re the pioneers of T4?
