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Sydney Airport has reached 92 per cent of pre-COVID-19 passenger capacity in the June quarter, with domestic traffic still slow to recover.
Sydney saw around 9.7 million passengers in Q2 2024, including 3.8 million international and 6 million domestic passengers, with total passenger traffic up 6.4 per cent on Q2 of 2023.
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This represents a 94.3 per cent international and 90.5 per cent domestic recovery rate on Q2 of 2019, and comes as Perth Airport exceeds its pre-pandemic capacity for the 2023–24 financial year while Melbourne and Brisbane Airports each hover around 95 per cent of pre-pandemic figures.
“We saw strong international passenger volumes throughout Q2 with seat capacity growing across the markets of Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam versus the same period last year,” said Sydney Airport CEO Scott Charlton.
“This was underpinned by increased frequencies including Thai Airways adding a second daily service to Bangkok; Jetstar putting on a new, three-weekly service to Osaka; and VietJet Air adding a twice-weekly service to Hanoi.
“On the domestic front, we’re still seeing a lag relative to international due to higher airfares, a lack of capacity and a downturn in discretionary business travel affecting demand.”
The airport saw “significant improvements” in operational performance, said Charlton, with almost 100 per cent of passengers getting through security in under 10 minutes, and only five instances in three months of kerbside drop-off times peaking briefly above 10 minutes.
In April, the airport launched a security wait time tracker on its website as part of a push for operational transparency.
“An important aspect is our kerbside performance, and the way traffic congestion has been managed, with not a single day in the domestic precinct where kerbside drop off times peaked above 10 minutes,” Charlton said.
“Maintaining this performance will be critical in the context of the Sydney Gateway project opening later this year.”
Charlton has called on the federal government to quickly implement the recommendations of the Harris review, especially the “recovery mechanism”, which he says will help the airport catch up more quickly after weather events and other disruptions.
“Airservices Australia had a ‘ground delay protocol’ in place due to weather on 41 out of 91 days during Q2,” he said.
“We know that on each day we are on ground delay, we see on average a 21 per cent increase in cancellations. Over time, that adds up to a lot of cancelled flights that could have potentially been avoided with a recovery mechanism.
“Last Friday’s global technology outage is another good example. It took some airlines a number of days to recover their schedules, and perhaps the impact wouldn’t have been as severe with a recovery mechanism, which is why we are looking forward to working with the Government to implement it as soon as possible.”
