Monday 21 August 2023

A total of 3.38 million passengers passed through Sydney Airport in July 2023, representing an 87.8% recovery compared to pre-pandemic July 2019.

For the first time since Covid travel restrictions eased, the international recovery has overtaken the domestic recovery, with a surge of passengers from China boosting international traffic.

A total of 1.30 million travellers passed through Sydney Airport’s T1 international terminal in July, representing an 89.1% recovery rate on July 2019.

Domestic passenger traffic increased 4.1% year-on-year to 2.08 million travellers in July. This represents an 87.0% recovery rate compared to July 2019.

Chinese passengers ranked no.1 overseas visitors to Sydney Airport

This is the first time Chinese passengers have ranked as the number one overseas visitors since pre-pandemic 2019, when they consistently were the most popular foreign passport holders at Sydney Airport.

The number of Chinese nationals coming through the T1 international terminal in July represents a 76% recovery rate on pre-pandemic July 2019 passengers, up from 69% in June.

Another key market experiencing strong growth is South Korea, with 20% more Korean nationals flying through Sydney than in July 2019.

The Seoul-Sydney route has been growing in popularity, with 5 airlines now operating services; Korean Air, Asiana Airlines, T’way Air, Jetstar and Qantas. Pre-Covid only two airlines serviced this route.

Sydney Airport CEO, Geoff Culbert, said: “The underlying result on passenger traffic for July is mixed. The headline result for international passengers is encouraging but it’s a two-speed recovery, with strong growth from China, Korea and India offset by lagging markets like the USA and New Zealand. The lag is being driven by a lack of seat capacity rather than a lack of demand. Additionally, seats from the Middle East remain well below pre-COVID levels, down 27 per cent on July 2019.”

“The trend with respect to domestic activity has continued, with passenger numbers stagnant over the past 15 months. We continue to see evidence of unused slots going to waste, with a persistent mismatch between slots held by domestic airlines and the schedule that is flown.”

1. Due to data availability, all international passenger numbers (including PCP, prior corresponding period comparisons) are based on Confirmed Airline Passenger (CAP) data. As per previous information releases, these figures may contain estimates with any adjustments to preliminary statistics included in the year-to-date results in future months

2. Includes Domestic-on-Carriage

3. All data is for arriving and departing international passengers. All data is taken from management accounts, is provisional and subject to revision. All data has been rounded to the nearest thousand and in some instances the total may not be equal to the sum of the parts. Percentage changes have been calculated based on actual figures