Sydney Airport is quite the interesting case to analyze when taking into account the post 2020 era. Australians are among the nationalities most accustomed to relying on air travel and therefore it was easily predictable that air travel would rebound rapidly. However, even when looking at 2024’s overall traffic results, there are some anomalies that stand out. So, let’s take a look at what traffic looked like for Sydney International airport in 2024 and what these anomalies are.
First Things First – Sydney International Airport’s 2024 Yearly Traffic Recap
Sydney international airport wrapped up 2024 with a solid passenger traffic volume. 41 million passengers transited via Kingsford Smith international airport over the 12 months of 2024.
That marks a 7.1% growth over the prior year (2023). Where the airport really performed well was in 2024’s Q4. Just in the last 3 months of the year alone 11 million passengers used the airport. That is a level 5% higher than Q4 in 2023.
Despite these very healthy growth levels, the airport still hasn’t been able to break through its 2019 air traffic levels. Passengers volumes in 2024 are sill 6.8% behind what they used to be in 2019. Even that impressive Q4 looks a lot less impressive when compared to what Q4 of 2019 looked like. Q4 2024 is 5.6% behind what it was in 2019, which means that the airport has still plenty of work to do to regain its pre-2020 status.
There is an interesting trend, that I have been observing for quite some time, confirmed by this latest traffic report. Let me explain below.
A Confirmed Trend – Domestic Lagging Behind International Air Traffic
What I was referring to just above is that domestic air traffic continues to grow at a much slower pace than international.
For instance Q4 2024 was mainly behind 2019 levels because of domestic air travel volumes. As mentioned above the overall airport passenger traffic was 5.6% off 2019 Q4 levels, however, if you break that up between domestic and international you’ll find that:
- International passenger traffic was down by a mere 0.9% from 2019 (6.65 million passengers in Q4 2024)
- Domestic passenger traffic, instead, was down by a much greater 8.5% from 2019 levels (4.35 million passengers in Q4 2024).
This is also the case if we take into account passenger volumes for the entirety of 2024:
- International passenger traffic was down by 3.5% from 2019 (25.09 millions passengers).
- Domestic passenger traffic, instead, was down by a much greater 8.9% from 2019 levels (16.3 million passengers).
The gap between international and domestic passenger volumes is closing. The slow growth of domestic traffic could be attributed to, in my opinion, to one or more of these factors:
- Lower trust of passengers and a decreasing number of domestic travel options – Think of how Bonza and REX went out of business over the last 12 months.
- A stronger demand for international travel over domestic for the leisure segment. Following a long border lockdown Australians are looking to travel more abroad.
- Holidays abroad are just cheaper – Life costs are extremely high in Australia and in many cases a holiday abroad is just simply cheaper than within Australia, hence a stronger demand for flights to overseas destinations.
South Korean Traffic Continues its Steep Growth Curve
Let’s wrap up this post with an interesting piece of data. Which nationalities have transited via Sydney Airport the most in 2024 and how their volumes hold up in comparison to 2019. Before going over the numbers, there are two nationalities which have grown in double digits over 2019 levels: South Koreans and Indians (respectively 33% and 10%). Here’s the top 10 nationalities for Sydney Airport in Q4 2024:
- Australians – +8.4%
- Chinese – -15.1%
- New Zealand – -8.3%
- USA – -15.6%
- UK – -15.2%
- South Korean – +33%
- Indians – +10%
- Japanese – -12.2%
- Philippines – +7.7%
- Canadians – -1.4%