Covid restrictions blamed for two-speed travel recovery as international passenger traffic remains weak

Figures showing the slow recovery of international travel in Australia has sparked calls for a further relaxation of Covid requirements.

Sydney Airport is still seeing only a fraction of the international travellers it did pre-Covid, with airlines blaming ongoing restrictions in place. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone/NCA NewsWire

Sydney Airport is seeing a two-speed recovery from the Covid crisis as domestic travel surges but international travel struggles to gain momentum. 

Passenger figures for February showed domestic travellers exceeded 1 million for the first time since May last year, to be back to almost 50 per cent of 2019 levels. 

In contrast only 230,000 international travellers passed through the airport, down 12 per cent on January’s figures, and still 82.6 per cent below pre-pandemic figures. 

Sydney Airport chief executive Geoff Culbert was hopeful that as international capacity returned to the city, those figures would increase. 

“Internationally, airlines are putting on more capacity and by the end of March we will have 12 of the 21 airlines who stopped flying to Sydney during the pandemic, back flying regular services,” said Mr Culbert. 

“The airlines who aren’t yet back are still maintaining staff and offices here, which gives us confidence they do intend to return.” 

The organisation representing international airlines in Australia, BARA, warned there was unlikely to be any strong rebound in international travel until all Covid restrictions were relaxed.

Board of Airline Representatives of Australia executive director Barry Abrams, said things like expensive pre-departure Covid tests, further tests on arrival and showing vaccination certificates were all deterrents to travel.

“There’s a clear need for health authorities to review from start to finish, all the requirements in place for passengers and crew of international airlines,” Mr Abrams said.

“If there’s not a clear public health benefit in the environment we are now in with the virus widely circulating, we should be removing those measures to help create a viable industry.”

Mr Abrams said until those measures were addressed, it was unlikely international travel would recover much beyond about 30 per cent of pre-Covid levels.

“We’re not surprised by those (Sydney Airport) figures because that’s our informal feedback from members,” said he said.

“Even just from a practical position, being able to process passengers takes much more time because although vaccination certificates and test results can be uploaded digitally, these things need to be manually verified.

“We can’t get seamless systems to move the sorts of volumes we had pre-pandemic, while these measures are still in place.”

A growing number of overseas countries have moved to drop all Covid requirements for incoming arrivals, including the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Mexico and Jordan.

International Air Transport Association data showed 25 markets were now open to vaccinated visitors without quarantine or testing requirements, and 38 countries required a test but no quarantine.

Most of those were in Europe, the Americas and the Middle East, with the Asia Pacific lagging behind.