According to Travel Today, Air traffic in and out of Australia set a new record in January with 2.475 million passengers during the calendar month. Qantas Airways saw its share of international traffic continue to erode, accounting for only 18.4% of traffic in January, compared to 21.8% in January 2009. 

However Jetstar saw its share increase from 6.9% to 7.9%.  Low cost carriers such as Air Asia X, Jetstar, Pacific Blue and Tiger accounted for 18% of total traffic, up 3.4 percentage points. Singapore Airlines increased its share to 9.4% while Emirates also grew to 7.7%.  Air New Zealand had the third highest market share with 8%.

However, the Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF) warned that the growth in passenger traffic was driven by the outbound market.  “It is predominantly fuelled by outbound travel, with Australians taking advantage of low fares and the strong economy,” TTF national manager, aviation, Caroline Wilkie said. “The challenge for the Australian tourism industry is to re-address the imbalance and convert more of the available capacity into international arrivals.” 

While inbound tourist arrivals held steady in 2009, the TTF claimed outbound travellers has surged by 8.2%, resulting in Australians spending more overseas than tourists here by about $4 billion. This is in stark contrast to 2002, when international visitors spent $4bn more than Australian tourists overseas.

Editors Comments: This is very positive news.  It's great having all passenger numbers on the increase.   It is interesting to note that this does not include Qantas.  I wonder if anyone at Qantas has noticed that they are the only ones going down when everyone else is going up...I doubt it, I don't think they read their emails, it's probably all marked SPAM to protect them from the 'nasty' outside world ?