Cairns Airport finally got around to posting their September data, and also their October data. Domestic numbers continue to be soft.

The decline in domestic passenger numbers for Cairns is now comparable with the post GFC decline. It may be worth having a look at that over the respective growth cycles.

International is a relatively small component of the total and is subject to some erratic volatility so is difficult to analyse separately. The combined total tells something about differences between the two periods.

International was already dragging the total performance down even in the Cairns economic boom leading up to the GFC. The hit to international was hard and fast after the Lehman collapse in September 2008 with international down up to 30% in the subsequent year. In contrast the current weak numbers we are seeing are almost entirely domestic with international mitigating the percentage decline to a small extent.

Uncategorized