New data from the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics shows that passenger numbers on domestic routes increased by 2.3 per cent during September over the same month in 2008.
Overall, there were 4.35 million passengers carried on domestic services during the month, resulting in a 2.5 per cent increase in revenue-passenger kilometres. Capacity was 1.5 per cent lower, while the number of aircraft trips decreased by one per cent. Load factor increased by 3.2 percentage points to 82.3 per cent.
Across individual routes, the greatest increase in traffic occurred on Adelaide-Gold Coast, with passenger numbers up by 35.8 per cent. Other major increases were seen on Adelaide-Canberra (+33 per cent), Melbourne-Mildura (+26.2 per cent), Adelaide-Perth (+19.3 per cent) and Port Macquarie-Sydney (+18.5 per cent) – all routes which have seen an increase in competition over the year due to new entries by Tiger Airways and Virgin Blue.
The biggest decrease in passengers was felt predominately on leisure routes, with Cairns-Melbourne down 23.1 per cent, followed by Maroochydore-Sydney (-20.4 per cent), Kalgoorlie-Perth (-18.6 per cent) and Melbourne-Newcastle (-9.1 per cent).
