Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport pax up 7% in Apr-2016

Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport passenger numbers up 7% - traffic highlights for Apr-2016:

• Passenger numbers: 3.4 million, +7.0% year-on-year;
• • Domestic: 2.2 million, +5.2%;
  • International: 1.2 million, +10.6%. [more - original PR]

Sydney Airport: "International traffic through Sydney Airport in April experienced double digit growth (+10.6%). The excellent performance was driven by strong increases from Chinese, USA, Korean and Japanese nationals. Australian nationals also grew strongly at 9.9% particularly to destinations such as the USA, Indonesia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China. Importantly, the 12 month rolling international passenger growth is 6.7%, well ahead of long term trends.The domestic market continued to perform well, growing by 5.2%. Solid passenger growth on trunk routes and load factor improvements from both Qantas and Virgin were the primary drivers of the domestic result in April. Capacity is a key driver of passenger growth, so we were delighted this month to see Qatar Airways confirm and put on sale their A380 to Sydney from September. The larger aircraft has 517 seats compared to the 335 seat 777-300ER which they currently operate on the Doha-Sydney route. Qatar Airways only commenced services to Australia in March and the upgauge is an illustration of the early success and strong loads which the airline has experienced to date. This new aircraft provides a further upgrade to the already premium experience for passengers and represents an additional 133,000 seats per annum or a total (including those previously announced) of 378,000 seats annually." Kerrie Mather, MD and CEO.