April brought some respite for Cairns Airport with a positive growth number breaking a run of negative months. However we should recall our comments from last month:

There will be no excuses in April with the tailwinds into Cairns all positive from the later Easter shift and a scheduled domestic capacity increase from Qantas.

While international at 6.4% lifted total growth to 1.5% the concern is domestic at just 0.7% despite the Easter shift and capacity increase. That doesn’t look like a good number at all in context and also following this weeks profit downgrade and commentary from Experience Co. Annual growth remains negative at -2%.

Numbers from Sydney airport next week should provide some benchmark comparison. Will have to wait a while for BITRE data for more detail on capacity and routes for April.

Update from Sydney Airport:

“Domestically, subdued load factors and continued capacity management by airlines drove a reduction in domestic passengers for the month despite the later Easter holiday.”

Maybe April wasn’t that bad at least in a relative sense with domestic down -1.3%.

Uncategorized