Sydney Airport announces 1% increase in Jan-2012 pax

Australia's Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport passenger numbers up 0.5% - traffic highlights for Jan-2012:

• Passenger numbers: 3.1 million, +0.5% year-on-year;
  • Domestic: 2.0 million, -0.6%;
  • International: 1.2 million, +2.3%.

Australia was the major market that grew in the month (+3%), together with Hong Kong (+35%), South Africa (+26%), Japan (+19%), Malaysia (+16%), Ireland (+11%), Indonesia (+10%), India (+8%), New Zealand (+7%) and China (+4%). The UK (-11%), Korea (-9%), France (-6%), Germany (-4%) and the US (-2%) were the major markets that declined.

Sydney Airport: "Capacity increases remain the key growth driver for the airport, with significant growth derived from service enhancements such as Emirates' third daily service to Dubai and Qantas' introduction of A380 flights to Hong Kong. Asian markets continue to outperform with the 19% increase in Japanese inbound travel reversing last year's trend of traffic declines, while Malaysia and Indonesia posted significant year on year increases. Sustained growth from China also continued despite the cycling of very strong numbers in 2011. A very pleasing outcome of the airport's growth in January was the establishment of two new traffic records. The airport's international terminal experienced its busiest ever day with almost 43,000 international passengers processed through the terminal, while January overall was the airport's busiest ever month for international traffic," Kerrie Mather, CEO. Source: Company statement, 20-Feb-2012.