Australia’s domestic airlines carried 4.69 million passengers in September, according to BITRE (the Bureau of Infrastructure & Transport Economics), an increase of 8.0 per cent compared with September 2009.
September continues the recent trend of robust domestic passenger number growth, but again capacity increased faster than passenger numbers, such that industry wide load factor fell to 81.0 per cent (down from 82.3 per cent in September 2009). Capacity in ASKs for the month rose 10.3 per cent compared with September 2009 to 6.72 billion.
Traffic on the Sydney-Melbourne route grew 7.9 per cent for the month, Brisbane-Sydney traffic was up 2.0 per cent, and Brisbane-Melbourne up 13.4 per cent.
Sydney Airport recorded 2.08 million domestic passenger movements for the month, Melbourne 1.89 million and Brisbane 1.38 million.
For the 12 months to the end of September 2010 there were 52.79 million passengers, up 4.9 per cent on the same 12 month period to September 2009.