International flights officially the fullest over in and out of Australia

International flights to and from Australia have never been more full with new data revealing record loads in July with some routes having almost no spare seats.

New Delhi is among the destinations seeing strong growth on air routes from Australia, new Skyscanner data shows. Picture: AP/David Guttenfelder

International flights in and out of Australia have officially never been more full with new data revealing record loads in July.

The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics’ international airline activity report, showed an average seat utilisation across all flights of 85.5 per cent for the month.

A BITRE spokeswoman said the figure was the highest recorded since data was first collected in 1991.

The previous highest was 84.3 per cent in January 2017.

Limited airline capacity contributed to the big load factors with the total number of seats available in July still 47 per cent under pre-Covid levels.

On Etihad Airways, flights were consistently close to 100 per cent full with a 99 per cent average load factor on outbound services and 98 per cent inbound.

Qantas was also seeing huge demand particularly on its new direct flights to Rome and India, and services to London, all of which had more than 90 per cent of seats filled.

HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham said the strength of the travel demand was a bright spot in the current economic slowdown and would help shield Australia from recession.

Speaking ahead of his keynote presentation at Flight Centre Corporate’s Illuminate conference next month, Mr Bloxham said Australians saved over $250bn in the pandemic and were now ready to deploy those funds.

“Now that the world is reopening, there is a strong appetite for travel among the population and we expect to see a continued increase in travel activity, particularly domestically,” he said. “Australians are also starting to travel abroad again in large numbers. Corporate travel is reviving faster than leisure, with businesses returning to face-to-face contact, particularly at conferences and other events.”

Qantas’s direct flights to Rome have proven a huge success with load factors above 90 per cent in July.

Routes seeing the biggest growth out of Australia compared to pre-Covid were largely those driven by the “visiting friends and relatives” (VFR) market, Skyscanner data showed.

Although there were no direct flights between Adelaide and New Delhi, bookings for travel between those two cities had jumped 71 per cent, Melbourne-Kochi was up 62 per cent and reservations for Brisbane-London soared by 67 per cent this year.

Skyscanner global vice president of flights Hugh Aitken said the VFR market tended to be less sensitive to escalating airfares than leisure travellers who were yet to embark on overseas holidays in significant numbers.

“People are just really keen to connect with family so price doesn’t seem a deterrent,” Mr Aitken said.

“We’re certainly seeing a pick up in Bali and other destinations as well but not to the same percentage increase versus 2019 that we’ve seen in your Brisbane-London, Adelaide-New Delhi routes.”

Japan was likely to be the next major growth market following the country’s long awaited reopening to inbound travellers from October 11.

The announcement saw an immediate spike in searches for Japan from Australians on Skyscanner, which were up 27 per cent compared to a week ago.

As well as climbing rates of outbound travel, Mr Bloxham predicted inbound visitors to Australia would pick up in the next year as the dollar weakened to about 63 US cents.

“This will be attractive to international travellers, who may see us as a cheaper option for them, which will be helpful to the economy,” he said.

“While it will be slower bringing international leisure travellers back over corporates, their return presents a great opportunity for local businesses.”