Adelaide Airport chief outlines grand plan to fly direct to 37 major world cities

South Australians will be flying high in coming years on news Adelaide Airport has “realistic” plans to have direct services to around 37 major cities. See where and when.

Imagine a non-stop Adelaide flight to New York. Or London, New Delhi, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg or Santiago.

Adelaide Airport general manager Brenton Cox has these destinations and more on his radar with the airport’s Network Vision 2050 plan for direct flights to 37 cities.

While he says the chart makes some people “choke on their corn flakes”, the ambition is to make some of the world’s great cities a non-stop flight from Adelaide.

Adelaide Airport's Network Vision 2050. Picture: Supplied, Brenton Cox

Mr Cox has outlined the state of play at the airport and its big plans for the future, noting international air traffic to Adelaide is on an upward trajectory after collapsing when Covid effectively halted overseas travel.

By December the airport was back to 89 per cent of pre-pandemic capacity including 63 per cent of international flights – but just a month later international flights had soared to 70 per cent and climbing as confidence and customers return.

“The good thing is everything is heading in the right direction,” he said.

Key carriers Qatar Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air New Zealand, Malaysia Airlines, Fiji Airways as well as Virgin and Jetstar have resumed international services.

Mr Cox believes China Southern will resume flights this year, and expects Emirates and Cathay Pacific eventually to return.

Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox. Picture: Supplied, Adelaide Airport

He explained the huge investment needed to win a direct flight between North America and Adelaide.

“If you want a daily service you need two and a half aircraft, that’s over a billion dollars of just kit,” he said.

“And then every year you’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars of fuel and then hundreds of millions of dollars of people cost, so you’re investing effectively over $2bn to start a new dot on a map – and you’re flying over a current hub (such as Sydney).”

There is a “chicken and egg sort of dichotomy” in that airlines want demand to justify a direct service, Mr Cox noted – but people are less likely to go if a direct flight is not available in the first place.

Despite this, Mr Cox believes Adelaide has major opportunities to boost airline traffic – and turbocharge the tourism sector – with flights from Japan, North America, parts of Asia without direct links, New Zealand’s South Island and China.

Adelaide Airport destination graph.

Mr Cox has produced a map that shows possible connections for 2050 saying “it is not entirely crazy that one day we will be connected direct to London.” (The map shows direct connections rather than actual routes).

“This is 2050 – you show this to some people and they choke on their corn flakes,” he said.

“But this is not just made up dots on maps. This economic modelling is linked with what we know about aircraft technology orders over the next two to three decades, so all of this is genuinely realistic. And they’ll all come on board at different times.

“It really is sort of exciting to think that as long as our population continues to grow, that we do get that tourism balance and reach the potential we know that we have, that Adelaide will continue to be the wonderful city that it is but also entirely connected to the world.

“It is really exciting to imagine what that could look like and we’ve got a passionate, ambitious team of people and stakeholders all working towards this.”

South Australia’s visitor economy hit a record $8.1bn in the year to December 2019, then Covid hit and it slumped to $4.4bn in the year to March 2021.

It is now back to $7.3bn for the year to September 2022 and Tourism Minister Zoe Bettison says the state is back on track to its goal of $12.8bn by 2030 – arrivals to Adelaide Airport are a crucial part of the equation.