ATE MEDIA INFORMATION | AIRLINE NEWS AND AIR CAPACITY

AIRLINE NEWS AND AIR CAPACITYDestination NSW continues to work strategically with airline industry partners to grow air capacity and encourage more services to NSW.

The trump card for air travel to NSW is Sydney Airport, Australia’s main international gateway and the country’s busiest airport for scheduled international and domestic passenger services. Nearly half of all visitors to Australia enter the country through Sydney Airport, which has more routes, more destinations, more airlines and more frequencies than any other airport in Oceania.

Tourism Research Australia figures show that, of all international visitors who arrived in Australia during the year ended September 2014, over half (50.4%) visited NSW.

SYDNEY AIRPORT SETS NEW RECORDS

Sydney Airport saw a record number of passengers (38.5 million) in the 2014 calendar year. October 2014 was Sydney Airport’s busiest month ever, with 3.5 million passengers. International traffic continued to perform solidly for the airport, growing by 2.3% during the month of December and by 2.8% over the year.

The strongest growth in international passenger arrivals at Sydney Airport in the month of December 2014 came from China, Malaysia, USA, the Philippines, India and Canada.

Growth from China was supported by the start of a Sichuan Airlines twice-weekly service from Chongqing at the end of 2013. Chinese nationality travellers were Sydney’s fastest growing market (+16.4%) in 2014. International visitor growth during 2014 at the airport was led by China and Australia’s other Asian neighbours, India (+11.9%) and Malaysia (+11.6%). Arrivals from Korea grew at a slower rate, up 2.7%. The airport noted strong performance from the US market, growing 5% while arrivals from the UK market declined by 2.1% in 2014.

The growth in arrivals from China is well positioned to continue under the new air services agreement between the governments of Australia and China; the aim is to triple aviation capacity between the two countries by 2016.

NEW AND INCREASED SERVICES DURING 2014 AND INTO 2015

In September 2014, Sydney Airport welcomed Cebu Pacific Air for the first time with four weekly services from Manila to Sydney before moving to five weekly services in December. Fiji Airways launched a new route from Suva to Sydney in 2014 with a three-weekly service while China Airlines commenced three services a week between Christchurch and Sydney in November 2014.

TOP: BONDI BEACH. MIDDLE: MRS MACQUARIES CHAIR AT THE ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS. BOTTOM: QANTAS AIRCRAFT FLYING OVER SYDNEY.

Five airlines delivered frequency increases in 2014, including:

■ China Airlines from Taipei increasing to seven weekly services for the northern hemisphere winter season

■ Malaysia Airlines from Kuala Lumpur increased services from 14 to 21 per week

■ Philippine Airlines from Manila increased from four weekly to seven weekly services

■ LAN from Santiago increased from four weekly to seven weekly services.

From October 2014, travellers from and to the USA benefited from the increased dedicated seat capacity provided by United Airlines on the Los Angeles and San Francisco services. Qantas also upgraded to an Airbus A380 on its direct service from Dallas and increased frequencies during summer 2015.

Qantas carries close to a third of visitor arrivals from the USA to Sydney, followed by United Airlines. Other important carriers on the route are Delta Airlines, Virgin Australia, Air New Zealand, Hawaiian and Jetstar.

In February 2015, Qantas increased its services to four per week from Santiago and moved its new daily service from Narita Airport to Tokyo Haneda Airport from August 2015.

Solomon Airlines will start operating a new Honiara to Sydney service using an Airbus A320 in June 2015, providing an additional 14,000 seats annually.

From October 2015, Cathay Pacific will upgrade its A330-300 to a second 777-300ER between Hong Kong and Sydney providing an extra 65,700 seats annually.

FLYING INTO SYDNEY

During 2013-14, more than 32 million people travelled on air services to and from Australia, and 60 million within Australia (Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development).

Data available from BITRE (Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics) shows that, in January 2015, Sydney remained Australia’s busiest domestic airport with 2.10 million passenger movements, followed by Melbourne with 1.97 million and Brisbane with 1.32 million.

The busiest domestic routes in the month of January 2015 were Sydney-Melbourne and Sydney-Brisbane. Australia’s busiest international city-pair routes for January 2015 were Auckland-Sydney and Singapore-Sydney.

In terms of international passenger carriage [for all Australia], Qantas Airways had the largest share of the market to Sydney in January 2015 with 15.3% of the total; followed by Emirates with 9.5%, Jetstar with 9.1%, Singapore Airlines with 8.2%, and Air New Zealand with 7.5% (BITRE).

Jetstar announced that it would increase frequencies on the existing Uluru-Sydney route from four times per week to a daily service from June 2014.

Qantas commenced a new direct service from Hervey Bay in May 2014 and Hamilton Island in July 2014.

As for the future, BITRE says that the total number of passengers through Sydney Airport is forecast to increase by 3.6% a year from 2010-11 to 72 million in 2030-31. International and domestic passenger movements are projected to increase by 4.5% and 3% a year (over the same period) to 27.7 and 44.3 million, respectively, in 2030-31.

BITRE’s projection is taken from its report, Air passenger movements through capital and non-capital city airports to 2030-31.

QANTAS AND VIRGIN AUSTRALIA DEVELOPMENTS

Internationally, Qantas has expanded its reach into China through codeshare agreements with China Southern, China’s biggest airline and a major player at Sydney Airport, and China Eastern. The agreement allows the carriers to share passengers across domestic and international routes.

Since November 2014, Qantas and American Airlines have expanded their joint business with additional codeshare services. This gives Qantas passengers access to more than 130 codeshare city pairs across North America, Canada and Mexico from Qantas’ Los Angeles and Dallas gateways.

From June 2015, an expanded partnership between Qantas and American Airlines will boost capacity between Sydney and the USA with new services from Los Angeles to Sydney with American Airlines and from San Francisco to Sydney with Qantas. The enhanced Qantas-American Airlines partnership is good news for tourism, business and trade, as it will increase the airlines’ Sydney-US capacity by 33 per cent, or an extra 301,000 seats a year.

Qantas and Emirates celebrated the second anniversary of their partnership in April 2015 with more than two million codeshare customers travelling on both carriers since the partnership launch.

In October 2014, Virgin Australia and Delta Airlines expanded their partnership in North America to cover three new destinations from Los Angeles – Nashville, Kansas City and Raleigh/Durham.

FOR MORE INFORMATIONsydney.com visitnsw.com

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PR CONTACT

Allison Lee Director, Media & Public Relations at Destination NSW +61 (0) 2 9931 1318 / +61 (0) 437 490 187 allison.lee@dnsw.com.au

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