International departing and arriving passengers at Sydney Airport grew by 3% to 9.6m between January and September.

 

All of the top 10 visitor arrivals nationalities (except the UK) registered positive increases over the previous nine-month period to September 2013, with the fastest growth evidenced amongst Chinese (+14.6%), followed by Indians (+13.9%) and Malaysians (+13.7%).

 

While not spectacular, the current solid traffic growth pattern at Sydney Airport bodes well for Heinemann Asia Pacific, which is due to take over the seven-and-a-half year duty free contract on February 17 next year [until 17.02.15-Ed].

 

In a statement today, CEO Kerrie Mather said: “Passenger numbers continued to grow at Sydney Airport in September with total passengers up 0.9% on the prior corresponding period (pcp). Passenger demand drove load factor improvement in both international markets (1.4 percentage point increase) and domestic markets (1.1 percentage point increase) during September.

 

 

STEADY INTERNATIONAL GROWTH

“Domestic passengers grew strongly, up 2.0% during the month. International services saw passenger numbers decline 1.2% on the pcp with the cycling of strong capacity additions and passenger growth in September 2013. Year to date, international traffic has grown by a robust 3.0%.

 

“We are pleased that Qantas will increase capacity on its Sydney-Santiago route by 33% with a fourth weekly service from February 2015. This is another example of strong load factors driving capacity expansion. Chilean nationality travellers increased by 12.8% in September and have increased by over 60% since 2011 as a result of the direct service introduced in March 2012.

 

“Solid growth continues in our fourth largest nationality market, with USA travellers up 3.3%. USA remains the largest foreign direct investor in the Australian economy and a major export market, and we are delighted to play our part in enabling bilateral trade, investment, education and tourism. In the year to date, the USA nationality market has grown 4.6% or over 20,000 additional passengers.”