Singapore Changi Airport: The Rain Vortex, a 1991 Hijacking and QF32

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In the 1970s Singapore's main airport at Paya Lebar, opened in 1955 to replace Kallang, grew from about 300,000 passengers to 4 million by 1975. A 1972 plan for a second runway there stalled after the 1973 oil crisis, and planners saw that expansion would trap the airport inside the city with jets over homes. In 1975 the government chose a former military air base at Changi on the island's eastern tip, sending flight paths over the sea. Changi opened on July 1, 1981, when Singapore Airlines Flight 101 from Kuala Lumpur landed at 7:10 a.m. with 140 passengers, and it handled over 12 million passengers in its first year. Terminals followed in 1990, 2008 and 2017, and ground was broken for Terminal 5 in May 2025.

Jewel, a 1.7 billion Singapore dollar complex built over Terminal 1's old parking lot in 2019, holds the 40-meter Rain Vortex, the world's tallest indoor waterfall, and is open to the public, not just passengers. In 2025 Changi handled nearly 70 million passengers and 2.08 million tons of air freight, much of it semiconductors and AI hardware, with FedEx Express using it as a principal hub. Traffic fell to 3 million in 2021; Terminals 2 and 4 closed, and Terminal 2 received a three-and-a-half-year rebuild with a 14-meter digital display called the Wonderfall before travel returned.

• In March 1991 four hijackers seized Singapore Airlines Flight 117, an Airbus A310; after a standoff of more than eight hours, commandos killed all four with no passenger or crew casualties.
• In November 2010 Qantas Flight 32, an A380 with 469 people aboard, suffered an uncontained engine failure after leaving Changi and returned with everyone surviving.
• Severed control cables left one QF32 engine running after landing, and crews poured water into it for three hours to shut it down.
• A May 2017 fire in the Terminal 2 departure hall forced an evacuation and the diversion of 40 flights to Terminal 3.
• Auxiliary police forces Certis and AETOS handle armed security, and three airside fire stations and a sea rescue base cover emergencies.