Chart of the week #23: How the point of departure of US-Australia flights has & hasn't changed over time

Earlier this month, United Airlines announced a new seasonal service between San Fransisco and Adelaide, starting in December 2025. The ensuing discussion on social media noted how the post-COVID era has led to a reconfiguration of flights between Australia and the United States.

In the last few years San Fransisco has reemerged as a major hub for travel from the US to Australia, led by United’s strong capacity growth. Dallas has also emerged as a growing hub as Qantas and American Airlines have pushed significantly more traffic through Dallas. The looser in this reconfiguration is undoubtedly Los Angeles.

Long term trends are fascinating! San Fransisco accounted for 21% of departures from the US to Australia in 2024. Excluding the COVID affected years, this is a relative high, having grown from just 5% in 2015. Yet, going all the way back to 1985 we see that San Fransisco account for 23% of all departures.

While Los Angeles has seen a decline in popularity in recent years it still accounted for 51% of all departures in 2024. Going back to 1985, Los Angeles only accounted for 40% of all departing passengers but grew to high of 77% in 1994 and maintained levels in the high 60s and 70s until 2011. So what changed?

The most important factor in these changing dynamics over time is aircraft range. Before the introduction of the B747-400 in the 1990s nearly all flights had to take a fuel stop between the US and Australia. Inevitably, this was Honolulu meaning that it became an important transit hub. In 1991 it accounted for 48% of passengers, bigger than LAX’s 46%! Its importance declined rapidly as the B747-400 enabled non-stop services between the mainland US and Australia in the following years.

This has continued in contemporary times as Qantas and American have shifted capacity from Los Angeles to Dallas, while United have also shifted some capacity to Houston. These destinations weren’t in range until the A380 and B787-9 brought them into play. Dallas and Houston now account for 11% of departing passengers and offer passengers a wider range of efficient connections to many Midwestern, Southern and East Coast destinations.

Another factor is the US-Australia open skies agreement that entered into force in 2008. Older generation bilaterals significantly influenced traffic flows and routes between the countries, however these were inevitably designed for the technology of the time.

Chart of the Week #6: How much of an impact did open skies have on Australia-US travel? Part 1

Chart of the week #7: How much of an impact did open skies have on Australia-US travel? Part 2

Looking forward, we expect this evolution to continue with the increasing efficiency of long range aircraft allowing more point-to-point traffic, enabling connections into a more diverse range of US hubs and bypassing the traditional West Coast hubs in a similar manner to the bypassing of Honolulu. That doesn’t mean these hubs will be eliminated as they still allow efficient connections to many parts of the US and hold significant O&D demand in their own right.

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Just a reminder of our last “Chart of the week”, that looked at the changing popularity of destinations for Australians in 2024, including a nice interactive map!