Five and a half years!

That's what is took Australian international airline capacity to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic

Update: the data used in this analysis is available on our Capacity Tracker dashboard. It’s easy to use and pretty fun to play with, allowing you to filter data by any combination of airline, Australian destination city, or international city and country of origin.

Last week, we published a poignant Chart of the Week showing how international airline capacity to Australia has finally returned to its pre-pandemic baseline. In the 12 months to July 2025, international reached 24.8 million seats, slightly exceeding the 24.7 million seats in the 12 months to January 2020. It took five and a half years to recover what was destroyed in a few weeks by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Given the length of time its reasonable to expect that the distribution of that capacity would’ve changed significantly, augmented by the dramatic structural shifts in the global economy. We’ve observed significant changes in the airline landscape with some new carriers having appeared or grown their Australian presence, and several notable casualties. Travel patterns have also changed, with the popularity of several destination increasing while other historically important destinations have suffered from slow recoveries and macroeconomic shocks.

As promised last week, let’s delve into the trends, first by looking at the distribution of that capacity on the Australian side of things and then the countervailing countries before looking at the evolution by airline. The BITRE data we use tracks capacity utilising inbound seats. We’ve included a methodological note at the end of the article to explain how we handle the data since there are some quirks as to how capacity is measured for multi-stop flights.