Sydney Airport Still Not at 2019 Levels in 2024 Q2

It's reporting season for publicly listed companies, but it's also result analysis time for airlines and airports alike. Among the entities releasing their performance in 2024 Q2 and the first semester is Australia's largest and busiest airport. Sydney international airport, as we'll shortly see, still hasn't filled the gap with its pre-2020 figures but has shown constant growth over 2023. So, let's dive into some number crunching looking at Sydney Airport's performance figures for Q2 2024.

Sydney Airport Traffic Growing Over 2023

Let's start off at looking at the positive side of the news coming from SYD airport. Traffic is up, over 2023. Sydney International Airport saw a 6.4% increase in passenger numbers in Q2 2024 over the same period of 2023. In absolute numbers that means that in Q2 passengers went up from 7.48 million passengers to this year's 9.74 million.

In the initial six months of the year instead the percentage increase clocked in at 10.4% with a total of 20.06 million passengers using the airport. That all looks fantastic, but it all goes back into perspective when we weigh it out against the 2019 baseline. When we do so the story changes massively.

Still Some Ground to Be Made Up On 2019 Levels

What is less positive, and puts and tones down all the enthusiasm for the massive growth numbers, is the gap with 2019 levels that is still there.

2024 Q2 is still off 2019's same period by 8.1%. While 2024's first six months are slightly better with a smaller 7.1% gap with the last pre-pandemic year.

Therefore, in 3 years while other parts of the world have already caught up with 2019 levels, and in some cases even surpassed them, Sydney is still lagging. What is even more interesting is the very different speeds of recovery that domestic and international traffic have been growing and coming back at.

International Performing Better than Domestic

TLDR is that domestic is recovering slower than international. While international is 5.7% behind 2019 levels in Q2 and only 4.5% in the semester, domestic is recovering at half the speed. In Q2 domestic passenger figures are 9.5% off 2019 while in the semester that figure goes down to 8.8%. It seems that so far Australians are not flying as much within the country but have developed an appetite for flying abroad, and so have foreign tourists for visiting Sydney.

On Time Departures? Not Sydney's Forte

From the Q2 reporting one figure stands out as not ideal, on time departures. in 2024 Q2 only 67.9% of flights departed on time (or within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time) from Sydney airport. Although that figure is up from last year's 61.3% it's still far from being at an ideal level. 2024's first six months are also performing better than 2023, with on time departures up from 59.1% to 67.3%.

This further confirms as to how Sydney airport is congested. If traffic get closer to 2019 levels it will become increasingly harder to improve OTDs. To me it confirms how Sydney is in dire need for its new airport and WSA cannot be ready soon enough to lighten the load on the aging Kingsford Smith.