Passenger numbers up at east coast capitals

Australia’s three east coast capital city airports all posted healthy increases both domestic and international passenger numbers in November.

Melbourne Airport said international travellers rose 9.9 per cent to 728,212 at Tullamarine in November, compared with the prior corresponding period, as airlines such as Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Philippine Airlines added extra seats in the month.

There was also a healthy four per cent increase in domestic travellers in the month.

“New services and increased capacity are critical to providing Victorians and travellers with more choice and convenience,” Melbourne Airport chief executive Lyell Strambi said in the statement on Friday.

“Our strong global connections go hand-in-hand with Victoria’s status as host of global events including the upcoming Boxing Day Test and Australian Open.”

Tullamarine received more new capacity in December, when China Southern began an extra four flights a week from Guangzhou. The seasonal service is scheduled to operate until the end of February and lifts the Skyteam alliance member’s frequency to Melbourne to 18 flights a week over the three-month summer holiday period.

The MEL-CAN-MEL service is now 18x per week – up from twice daily – with an additional morning service CZ610 from 6th December 2015 to 1st March 2016.

Brisbane Airport too reported an overall increase in passenger numbers in November, with international travellers up 2.4 per cent to 409,970 and while its domestic handled a touch under 1.45 million passengers in the month, up 4.2 per cent from a year earlier.

The airport announced this week a partnership with online travel website Booking.com that will allow people to make hotel reservations from the airport’s own website.

There was also passenger growth at Sydney Airport, where domestic passenger numbers rose 4.2 per cent in November to 2.27 million. Meanwhile, the number of international travellers going through the airport rose 5.6 per cent to 1.13 million.

“This excellent result was driven predominantly by seat capacity growth from new and existing airline customers,” Sydney Airport chief executive Kerrie Mather said in a statement.

“All four domestic airlines increased seat capacity in November, with Brisbane and Melbourne being the largest beneficiaries of these seat capacity increases from Sydney.”

Mather said the arrival of Xiamen Airlines and Japan's largest carrier ANA in recent weeks represented an extra 280,000 seats a year at the airport.

Other international flights due to launch in December included Qantas’s return to San Francisco and the return of American Airlines to Australia with daily Boeing 777-300ER flights.