Chart of the Week #2: international flight load factors to/from Australia by country

Following from our first short data visualisation post a few weeks back which showed a cool animated visualisation showing the continuous evolution of where Australians travel, we’ve decided to turn this into a regular weekend post. Let’s call it the “chart of the week”!

This weeks chart shows the country-by-country load factors of international flights to/from Australia over the last year using the most recent BITRE data, covering the 12 month period from May 2023 to April 2024. With an average load factor of 80%, the figure includes some surprises. Some of the top performing countries might be a surprise!

South Africa come out top although that might be more to do with Qantas’s reduction in capacity from the B747-400 to B787-9, and the continued absence of South African Airways from the market until April. However, regular readers are probably aware of this from our posts here and here.

Italy is a surprise too, especially since it’s only served by a seasonal flight by Qantas. As is Sri Lanka! Singapore is probably a surprise simply due to the massive capacity between Singapore and Australia! India isn’t though, again regular readers would have read this here.

The most significant poor performers? Certainly the UAE given its importance as a global connecting hub. But maybe no surprise is the United States, with a 74% load factor. We’ve previously discussed the US routes in detail and challenges with over capacity over the last Australian summer. See here and here.