Int’l air seats rise 10% in 2016

INTERNATIONAL airlines have driven down Qantas’ share of overseas traffic by close to 50% over the 10 years to 31 Dec 2016, new data released by the Australian Government confirms.

In 2006, the Australian flag- carrier claimed 28.1% of int’l pax traffic, well ahead of second place Singapore Airlines at 11.3%, Air New Zealand at 9.0% & Emirates at 6.8%.

Fast-forward five years, and QF’s share of the market slid to 18.2%, with SQ and Air NZ also seeing dips to 9.0% & 8.3% respectively, while Jetstar took 8% & Emirates lifted its pax volume to 7.9%.

According to the International Airline Activity Annual report released last Fri, in 2016 Qantas held 15.6% of foreign traffic, while sister carrier Jetstar claimed 9.5% of the market.

Qantas’ partner EK was the top foreign airline operating into Australia, based on passenger movements, at 8.8%, followed by SQ (8.1%) and Air NZ at 6.5%.

Rounding out last year’s top 10 carriers was Virgin Australia (6.3%), Cathay Pacific (4.9%), AirAsia (3.9%), Etihad Airways (3.1%) & China Southern (2.9%).

In 2016, available seats jumped a whopping 9.9% year-on-year to 49.3 million.

The report determined that for the year ending 2016, Tigerair Australia operated the fullest outbound planes (on its short- lived Denpasar services) with a seat utilisation of 90.2%.

Virgin Australia’s Abu Dhabi route operated fullest on inbound legs at 88.9% (excluding Jin Air’s charter flights which were 95%).