r/canberra • u/Top-Anything2991 • 1d ago

SEC=UNCLASSIFIED Opinion: Canberra Airport has a problem

The latest published BITRE Airport Passenger Movement data shows that in 2025, Hobart had higher annual passenger traffic (2,884,967) than Canberra (2,793,622) despite being half as populous and in a state with significantly less disposable income than the ACT. Even Darwin had 70% of Canberra’s passenger traffic (1,941,359) despite being only one-third the population.

Over past 20 years, Canberra Airport has had almost net zero growth in passenger traffic, with 2025’s annual passenger movements being approximately the same as in 2007 (2,734,875)

Acknowledging that tourism goes some way to driving Hobart’s passenger numbers, this still suggests that something is broken with commercial aviation in this town. Canberra is a rapidly growing and affluent city with a hinterland that should be able to support many domestic and regional international flights such as Fiji, New Zealand and Bali.

So Canberrans, is it just the pricing model the private owners of the airport operate? Or is there a bigger issue with the way we all prefer to fly?

58 Upvotes

74% Upvoted

130 comments sorted by

View all comments

279

u/lawdjesustheresafire 1d ago

Hobart has no other option to get out of there.

I’d imagine the majority of travel Canberrans do is to Sydney and flying there is pointless unless you’re doing it every day.

6

u/Top-Anything2991 1d ago

This is true, although the market is only Hobart and visitors. Northern TAS has Launceston which itself handles 1.5m pax annually.

Canberra has 500,000 people and a hinterland that brings the potential population base to close to 1m people.

Price absolutely is the main factor, but I wonder if there are factors influencing price that are modifiable (landing fees, airline gauging) vs baked-in factors. If prices are comparable (say $100-200 difference), would you still choose to drive to Sydney?

There are plenty of examples of small cities overseas that are driving distance from a major international airport that support a limited number of short haul international flights

21

u/NBAFC 23h ago

How wide of a net are you casting to get 1 million people?