The Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Mr Anthony Albanese, today released the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (BITRE) report Domestic airline activity 2011-2012 which shows more Australians are flying domestically then ever before. The data records 55 million people flew between Australian domestic ports last financial year.
Over the last 10 years, the number of Australians flying domestically has grown on average by 6.1 per cent every year despite various economic problems and natural disasters.
The other report highlights include:
- The number of Australians travelling on regional routes continues to grow, with growth on these routes outstripping growth on capital city routes.
- Sydney remained Australia's busiest domestic airport with 24.20 million passenger movements, followed by Melbourne with 21.42 million passenger movements and Brisbane with 16.44 million passenger movements.
- Melbourne–Sydney remained Australia's busiest route with 7.73 million passengers, followed by Brisbane–Sydney with 4.35 million passengers and then Brisbane–Melbourne with 3.15 million passengers.
- The greatest percentage increase in passenger traffic, compared with the year ending June 2011, occurred on routes in and out of Perth. This reflects huge demand for air travel by fly in fly out workers.
- Airlines are continuing to introduce additional seats in response to continued demand for air travel with the number of available seats rising to over 71 million, an increase of 0.7 per cent on the previous year.
Australia's aviation industry supports 50,000 jobs, injects over $5 billion into our economy each year and keeps Australians connected to each other and the rest world.
A copy of the Domestic airline activity 2011–2012 publication can be downloaded from BITRE's web site: www.bitre.gov.au/statistics/aviation/domestic.aspx
http://www.minister.infrastructure.gov.au/aa/releases/2012/September/aa201_2012.aspx for a copy of the media release.