Domestic traffic halved

TRAVEL restrictions due to Australia’s COVID-19 outbreaks have resulted in severe disruptions to domestic travel since Apr 2020, according to the annual domestic aviation report released this week by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE).

There were just under 25 million passengers carried on domestic commercial aviation in Australia over the 12 months to Jun 2021, a year-on-year decline of 48%.

The industry-wide load factor decreased from 79.3% in the year ending Jun 2020 to 64.1%, with the strongest loads recorded on the Brisbane-Proserpine route at 77.3%, while the lowest average load factor was 46.2%, on flights between Newman and Perth.

Load factors on individual routes declined on 34 out of the 35 published routes for which data is available in both 2021 and 2020.

Interestingly Melbourne-Sydney remained Australia’s busiest route with 1.73 million passengers - but that was still a massive decline of 73.8% year-on-year.

The second busiest route was Brisbane-Sydney with 1.24 million passengers, down 65%, followed by Brisbane-Cairns with 942,200 passengers, a decline of just 1.5%.

For the year to 30 Jun Brisbane was Australia’s busiest domestic airport, with 7.31 million passenger movements, followed closely by Sydney with 7.26m.

Melbourne recorded 5.89 million domestic passengers, a drop of 69% versus 2019/20.

Regional airports also saw significant declines over the year, with a total of 13 million passengers, down 30.4%.

The report also collates charter operations, with Perth Airport accounting for a hefty 37.7% of all charter passengers in Australia due to FIFO operations in the state’s resources sector.