THE Cairns-Melbourne route is the fastest growing airline service in Australia. An extra 6500 passengers, or 37,000 people, flew on the route in June, up 25.4 per cent on the June 2009 number of 29,600 passengers.
Passenger growth on the route is outstripping the nation’s No. 1 service between Melbourne and Sydney (619,900 passengers, up 21.6 per cent) and Gold Coast-Sydney (182,100, up 19.9 per cent).
Cairns-Brisbane is the most popular service at Cairns airport with 98,700 passengers in June (up 2.1 per cent or 2100 people), followed by Cairns-Sydney (97,400, up 12 per cent or 11,600). The services to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne are ranked No. 10, 15 and 25 respectively in national popularity.
In June, Cairns was rated the seventh busiest domestic airport with 284,400 passengers, up 10.8 per cent on June last year (256,700) but annual figures are down 4.5 per cent to 3.2 million to the end of June and rated eighth.
"Obviously, Melbourne has shown great resilience and is a very popular market for us," Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Rob Giason said.
"For us to be No. 1 at our peak season, that hasn’t happened for a while."
The boost in Melbourne visitors is a flow-on from Jetstar’s decision in April to increase capacity into Cairns from major Australian centres by 18 flights a week.
Another budget carrier, Singapore Airlines subsidiary Tiger Airways, is due to start daily Melbourne to Cairns flights next month.
Cairns Airport chief executive officer Stephen Gregg said last year the airport had been unable to grow because of the lack of flights but additional flights by Jetstar and Virgin Blue had since helped.
"We’re very happy with the situation," he said.
Cairns’ four and five-star hotels also have reported a boost in occupancies at the start of August.
