Zit Seng's Blog

A Singaporean's technology and lifestyle blog

Budget No More

In about 6 hours, our Changi Airport Budget Terminal closes for good. It seems we have run out of budget. Space budget, that is, because apparently the space occupied by the Budget Terminal is needed to build the airport’s next big thing — another terminal building. Yes, scrap one terminal to build another one. How clever.

The Budget Terminal is only 6 years old. It seems like it’s a half-hearted attempt to cater to low-cost carriers. You’d think there’s quite a lot of space around Changi Airport to build another regular non-budget terminal. If there was really not enough space, they could reclaim more land, and shuffle things around if they needed to keep the terminal buildings in closer proximity.

Nope, I suppose the Budget Terminal doesn’t gel with the big plans for Changi Airport.

I was just reading Mr Brown’s post on the Budget Terminal closure, and about the naming of the terminal that will take its place. This time around, the airport authorities will probably really need a naming contest for the terminal. You see, the obvious name like “Terminal 4” is a very bad idea because “4”, in Cantonese, means “die”.

So let me start off with a few suggestions:

  • New Terminal — It’s like the New iPad. No need numbers anymore. Of course, if they ever need Terminal 5, that would have to be named the Newer Terminal. Hopefully we don’t build too many more terminals, otherwise the names would really get confusing.
  • How about naming it after someone? I’m not sure who. We certainly would be setting a precedent as there are a bunch of examples you can find by Googling of terminals being named after people. Besides, we also name hospitals after people, like the Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (oh yah, maybe you didn’t even know about it…).
  • iTerminal — To be in-sync with the new intelligent nation thing (IN2015), and this generation of i-everything, why not the airport have an i-something too? Singapore could build this terminal to be a world showcase of terminal intelligence. [I think I must be affected with the flood of Apple news these two weeks or so.]

What other smart suggestions have you got?

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