AUSTRALIA. Sydney Airport served 3,120,000 passengers in January, representing an encouraging 78.8% of pre-COVID January 2019 levels.
Of the total, 1,233,000 were international passengers, equivalent to 73.9% of January 2019 figures. That represents a sharp improvement on the 48.7% ratio in December and the 46.2% result in November.
Domestic passenger traffic reached 1,887,000, an 82.4% recovery from the January 2019 performance.
With apposite timing, Sydney Airport announced the figures on 21 February – precisely one year since Australia reopened its border to the world.
The airport company chose the occasion to reintroduce data showing the top ten nationalities of passengers travelling through the airport each month.
In January, Australians travelling abroad took out the top spot, followed by New Zealanders, with US passengers ranked third. All the top ten nationalities showed recovery to above 74% of January 2019 levels except for the Chinese, still down -77.2% [largely driven by lack of airline capacity -Ed].
Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Colbert said: “It has been a challenging year for Sydney Airport since Australia reopened its border, but we are now seeing a steady stream of international travellers eager to explore the world again.
“While passenger numbers have increased since our border reopened, frustratingly the recovery is being impacted by the lack of capacity on key overseas routes.
“In January, the number of US and UK travellers was still only three-quarters of what we saw pre-COVID, while the number of passengers from previously popular European countries like Germany and France was even lower.
“With the border to China reopening earlier this year, we anticipate the number of Chinese travellers to increase significantly throughout 2023, especially with more capacity returning to key routes.” ✈
