I suspect Sydney to Melbourne is a business travel heavy route, and has been impacted by business travel recovering more slowly than leisure travel post pandemic
Good point, and probably a significant part of the puzzle. Brisbane should be the same but is probably offset by the larger population growth. It's so difficult to disentangle the causes since there are several contributors, but the business travel is key. Any idea on proxies that might help measure this?
I was looking for this comment! I note Analytic Flying's response and it is what I expected. I would be interested to know if leisure routes or months could help? How much has Sydney and Melbourne to Coolangatta increased? Or is there a lower drop between Sydney and Melbourne in December and January where presumably there was a higher proportion of leisure travellers to business in those months compared with other months!
Intriguingly, in the aggregate Gold Coast is down 118k and Sunshine Coast up 381k passengers over the last year compared to 2019. Seemingly very different trends, but there's a lot of confounders. Is it possible that OOL was getting more connecting traffic to/from Jetstar's international flights that switched to BNE?
That said, looking at MEL/SYD-OOL/MCY over the same period (i.e. last 12 months compared to 2019):
MEL-OOL: -7,069
SYD-OOL: -239,677
MEL-MCY: 185,178
SYD-MCY: 131,436
So it's not clearly just business vs leisure. Unfortunately we can't measure flows by airline, although could proxy by number of flights (somewhat imperfect).
On the point of traffic deviating away from going via Sydney for international connections, I can say that in my job experience, I am seeing more people from Perth (as that’s where I’m based) travel to North America via Asia (MNL, HKG, SIN, NRT/HND) or Auckland rather than Sydney because it cuts out the kerfuffle of customs and immigration on the east coast on the return leg. Not directly related to the Golden Triangle traffic, but definitely interesting to see when considering Sydney as an international hub.
I suspect Sydney to Melbourne is a business travel heavy route, and has been impacted by business travel recovering more slowly than leisure travel post pandemic
Good point, and probably a significant part of the puzzle. Brisbane should be the same but is probably offset by the larger population growth. It's so difficult to disentangle the causes since there are several contributors, but the business travel is key. Any idea on proxies that might help measure this?
I was looking for this comment! I note Analytic Flying's response and it is what I expected. I would be interested to know if leisure routes or months could help? How much has Sydney and Melbourne to Coolangatta increased? Or is there a lower drop between Sydney and Melbourne in December and January where presumably there was a higher proportion of leisure travellers to business in those months compared with other months!
Agree, I would also suggest an increased market share of Jetstar vs Qantas on the route would also suggest business demand has dropped off.
Apologies for forgetting to respond to this!
Intriguingly, in the aggregate Gold Coast is down 118k and Sunshine Coast up 381k passengers over the last year compared to 2019. Seemingly very different trends, but there's a lot of confounders. Is it possible that OOL was getting more connecting traffic to/from Jetstar's international flights that switched to BNE?
That said, looking at MEL/SYD-OOL/MCY over the same period (i.e. last 12 months compared to 2019):
MEL-OOL: -7,069
SYD-OOL: -239,677
MEL-MCY: 185,178
SYD-MCY: 131,436
So it's not clearly just business vs leisure. Unfortunately we can't measure flows by airline, although could proxy by number of flights (somewhat imperfect).
Thanks for the response. Quite fascinating. Will definitely be one to watch going forward!
On the point of traffic deviating away from going via Sydney for international connections, I can say that in my job experience, I am seeing more people from Perth (as that’s where I’m based) travel to North America via Asia (MNL, HKG, SIN, NRT/HND) or Auckland rather than Sydney because it cuts out the kerfuffle of customs and immigration on the east coast on the return leg. Not directly related to the Golden Triangle traffic, but definitely interesting to see when considering Sydney as an international hub.