Despite being located very far away from the Middle East, Australia has felt the hurt coming from the reduction in long haul flights. As we’ll see, Melbourne International Airport shows signs of this in its April 2026 passenger traffic report.
In this post:
- April 2026 Passenger traffic
- Financial Year To April 2026
- The Future Outlook For Melbourne Airport
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Melbourne Airport, April 2026 Passenger traffic
| Month | International | Domestic | Total | Total 2025 | Total 2025 Var. % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April | 953,595 | 2,055,468 | 3,009,063 | 3,110,684 | -3.27% |
Australia, and let alone Melbourne, are nowhere near the Middle East, but the impact of what is going on in the region is being felt by Victoria’s main airport.
Compared to April 2025, passenger traffic has decreased by 3.27%, which might not seem like a huge amount, but most of that reduction comes from international traffic.
Domestic airlines have reduced services to cope with the rising prices of fuel, but that only produced a 1.4% domestic traffic reduction.
On the international side of things, traffic decreased by 7.1%, which is much more significant than the 1.4% on domestic. Passengers dipped below the million in April 2026 at 953,595, compared to 1,026,386 in April 2025.
That drastic reduction in domestic passengers is primarily driven by the reduction in flights by the Middle Eastern carriers.
Even though South East Asian carriers such as Singapore Airlines, China Southern and others have picked up their flight volumes, that has not been able to compensate for the loss in traffic by the Middle Eastern carriers.
Financial Year To April 2026
| Passengers | Financial Year 2025/26 | Financial Year 2024/25 | Growth (%)* |
|---|---|---|---|
| International | 10,486,180 | 10,114,384 | +3.7% |
| Domestic | 20,981,959 | 20,403,138 | +2.8% |
| Total (excl. transits) | 31,468,139 | 30,517,522 | +3.1% |
Despite the reduction and the dip in passenger traffic in April of 2026, the overall figures for the financial year 2025 to 2026 are positive. For those living outside of Australia, the financial year in Australia ends in June.
Figures still show traffic up by 3% year over year at almost 31.5 million passengers, compared to 30.5 million passengers in the financial year 2024-2025 up to April.
The Future Outlook For Melbourne Airport
The hope is that tensions will ease and international passenger volumes will start picking up again. It will take some time before everything goes back to pre-conflict levels.
Despite these setbacks that international tensions have put upon the airport and passenger air travel in Australia, Melbourne Airport is pushing forward with its expansion plans.
The airport is going to be soon bringing online a new baggage handling system, and most importantly, it is working on its third runway, which will massively increase the capacity of the airport.
Capacity which will need to be addressed in other facilities as well. Most importantly, with international passenger traffic increasing exponentially over the last ten years, border control kiosks have not followed this trend, meaning that there are still bottlenecks at the airport which need to be resolved with the coming terminal renovations.