Brisbane airport believes it can continue growing over the next few years by targeting transit traffic to become an inbound traffic hub.
The airport’s general manager of airline and retail management Andrew Brodie tells FlightGlobal at Routes Asia in that 20% of its inbound passengers last year were transit.
“We definitely have lots of space to grow… the sky’s the limit on our transit traffic target,” he adds.
Brody says that Brisbane, which will be hosting the 2018 Routes Asia event, is embarking on “an education campaign” with carriers, advising them of its available slot capacity.
“Nearby capital cities are reaching capacity soon, and we rely a lot of domestic traffic intrastate within Queensland and shoot them outwards. We want to replicate that on our international services,” says Brody.
As an example, Brody says that 28% of its transit traffic moves northwards to Cairns.
Brisbane is also targeting more direct connections to China, after handling 1.2 million Chinese passengers last year.
Other markets for expansion include Japan, India and Indonesia – all of which have been growing at double-digit rates over the past year.
In 2015, the airport had a 20-year, A$3.8 billion ($2.97 billion) master plan approved that will see it cater for an expected 48 million passengers in 2035. Part of that includes the ongoing construction of a new parallel runway, which is expected to be commissioned in 2020.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
