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Australia’s domestic passenger traffic falls for third straight month in August
November 4th 2026
Airlines in Australia flew 5.02 million passengers on scheduled domestic flights in August, down from 5.06 million in-country air travellers in the same month in 2025. Read More » The decline in August followed an 0.3% fall in July and 0.1% contraction in June. Capacity measured by available seats fell 3.1% in August, Australia’s Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE) said, while revenue passenger kilometres were 0.3% lower year-on-year. Passenger load factor rose 2.2 percentage points to 82.2%. Despite the declines of the past three months, domestic passenger numbers were up 1.5% through the first eight months of 2026 at 60.7 million. Australia’s busiest domestic route - Melbourne-Sydney - recorded a 1.7% decrease in passenger numbers to 673,100 for the reported 31 days. The number of seats on the route was down 5.6% compared with a year ago. As a consequence, passenger load factor jumped 3.5 percentage points to 87.9%.
