Flights between Sydney and Melbourne the world’s fifth busiest air route

Despite Australia’s comparatively small population compared with many aviation destinations, the Sydney-to-Melbourne air route is the world’s fifth busiest for passengers, data shows.

Demand for air travel is expected to maintain its strength in 2025. Picture: Ian Currie

Despite its minnow status on the population front, Australia’s Sydney-Melbourne aviation route is once more the fifth busiest in the world, according to just released data from OAG.

The high volume of travel on this route is matched by high yields due to the strong corporate demand for flights between Australia’s two biggest cities.

Qantas, as the dominant airline, is the biggest beneficiary.

There were 9.2 million seats on the Sydney-Melbourne route in 2024, compared with the top-performing city pair of Jeju to Seoul, which had 14.2 million seats, equating to almost 39,000 daily seats, according to OAG.

Only two of the top 10 routes in the world were outside of Asia, being Sydney-Melbourne and Jeddah-Riyadh, which ranked as the sixth busiest. Three of the top 10 routes were in Japan.

All 10 routes remained the same as last year.

OAG chief analyst John Grant said global air travel was likely to remain at similar levels in 2025.

“The demand for air travel will generally remain strong, and the pre-pandemic normal travel patterns will resume,” Mr Grant said. “Corporate travel demand will gradually recover, compensating for any loss driven by the ‘revenge spend’ travellers.

“Therefore, we expect global load factors in 2025 to broadly remain at similar levels to 2024.”

OAG does not believe airfares on a global level are likely to drop in 2025, in part because of ongoing aircraft shortages. Boeing has been the worst affected by supply chain disruptions and also suffered a seven-week worker strike at its manufacturing base in Seattle. Airbus has also struggled with supply disruptions and, separately, engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce has major delays with its Trent engines.

“In 2025, average airfares are unlikely to fall significantly, as that balance between supply and demand remains crucial (sorry travellers),” Mr Grant said.

“Shortages of supply, rising operational costs, along with a strong US dollar will impact any scope for dramatic reductions.”

The strong US dollar affects all airlines that don’t earn their revenue in that currency because it’s the denomination that aviation fuel is priced in, which partially offsets the drop in the price of oil to one of its lowest levels since September 2018.

Qantas shares closed at a record high $9.22 Wednesday, just one day after the airline agreed to pay illegally fired baggage handlers a total of $120m in compensation. The airline is still to learn its fine for taking the decision to outsource the bulk of its baggage handling operations under then chief Alan Joyce during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Analysts are confident that current chief executive Vanessa Hudson is making inroads into getting the airline back on track after a series of staff and customer failures.