21 million passengers makes it another record year for BNE
Brisbane Airport has achieved another record year, registering more than 21-million international and domestic passengers through its terminals in the July to June FY period, equating to year-on-year growth of 4.6 per cent or more than 910,000 additional passengers.
Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) CEO and Managing Director Julieanne Alroe said it was an exceptional result for Brisbane Airport despite it being another eventful year for the aviation industry.
“You can never accurately predict what the future will bring and this year was no exception with both global and local events impacting travel trends.
“Factors such as the Rugby World Cup, the strong Aussie dollar, the addition of new routes and increased capacity to cater for the fly-in-fly-out market helped us achieve a strong result.
“However, floods and earthquakes, as well as difficulties for our airline partners including prolonged industrial action and the collapse of a local carrier, held back growth,” Ms Alroe said.
Brisbane Airport recorded a 4.5 per cent increase in domestic passengers, up 715,000 passengers to 16.51 million in FY12 with intrastate/regional traffic accounting for 33 per cent of total domestic traffic, up from 31 per cent in FY11.
Seat capacity on domestic routes was also up by 5.4 per cent equating to nearly 1 million additional seats on offer across the domestic network. Four out of five of these additional seats were allocated to intrastate destinations.
Flights between Brisbane and Avalon (Melbourne) recorded the highest load factors for the year, with Perth services achieving the greatest growth in passenger volumes in FY12.
The busiest day for domestic travel was during Easter with nearly 57,000 arrivals and departures recorded on Thursday 5 April, the day prior to Good Friday.
The 10 busiest domestic routes for FY12 were between Brisbane and Sydney, Melbourne, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Rockhampton and Newcastle.
Internationally, passenger growth rose by 4.6 percent rise to nearly 4.5 million or an extra 195,000+ passengers in FY2011-12.
Seat capacity on international routes was also up by 4.9 per cent (over 300,000 additional seats) with the average number of seats per flight was also up year-on-year from 230 to 239 due to the use of larger aircraft.
The fastest growing market was departures and arrivals of Australian passport holders, with 6.9 per cent growth (totally over 2 million passengers) in 2011-12.
September was also a record month in terms of Australians through the International Terminal, with over 200,000 arrivals and departures registered.
Nationalities contributing to the increase in overall inbound visitor numbers this year included travellers from mainland China (24 per cent increase to 179,000 passengers), New Zealand (3.5 per cent increase to 903,000 passengers) and India (10 per cent increase to 71,600 passengers).
The busiest day for international travel was on Sunday 18 September with over 17,000 arrivals and departures, making it the busiest day on record at Brisbane Airport’s International Terminal.
The most popular international destinations among Australian resident departing Brisbane in FY12 were New Zealand, USA, Fiji, Thailand and Indonesia, the latter replacing the UK in the top five during the year.
“We look forward to another busy year ahead with more capacity being added by the local airlines in the first quarter of the 2012 financial year, a full calendar of events promoted in interstate markets, and of course travel for the London Olympic Games giving us a great start to the year,” Ms Alroe said.