The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics has recorded that domestic passenger numbers increased by 0.4 per cent during August, compared to the same month last year.
The growth in passenger numbers increased revenue passenger kilometres by 0.7 per cent, while capacity in available seat kilometres was down by 3.1 per cent and available seats were down by 3.4 per cent. As a result, load factor increased up by 3 percentage points to 80.6 per cent.
By route, the biggest increase in passenger traffic was on the Adelaide-Gold Coast route which saw traffic increase by 39.1 per cent, followed by Adelaide-Canberra (+29.9 per cent) and Melbourne-Mildura (+27.8 per cent). The biggest falls occurred on Cairns-Melbourne (-25.6 per cent), Kalgoorlie-Perth (-17.1 per cent) and Maroochydore-Sydney (-13.9 per cent).
Interestingly, the data showed that traffic on the Melbourne-Sydney route increased by 4.5 per cent, possibly signalling that business traffic is beginning to recover, although year-end figures show that traffic is still down by 2.9 per cent compared to the previous 12 months ending August 31 2008.
