Airservices Australia has released its Australian Aviation Network Overview report for December 2024.
Highlights include:
- The Christmas holiday period recorded the strongest growth in international travel over the past five years, benefitting from tourism and capacity increase on international routes.
- This growth was offset by a contraction in domestic demand reflecting the cyclical trend in business travel and general aviation.
- Operational reliability was a key priority for our industry and we saw improved on-time performance (OTP) each month in 2024 when assessed against the same period in 2023. However, there was a deterioration in on-time OTP in November 2024 reflecting persistent challenges in balancing resilience with operational efficiency.
- December 2024 recorded the lowest level of Ground Delay Program (GDP) applications since reporting began, at around 10% of December 2023 levels, while airborne delays remained stable.
- Additional air traffic service resilience measures were put in place in preparation for the summer holiday period, including changing overtime rostering practices, minimising training and maintenance activities and having additional staff on call in key locations. Delays attributed to Airservices’ remained a small proportion of total delays (0.1%), without affecting peak passenger demand periods.
About Airservices
Airservices Australia is a government-owned organisation responsible for safely and efficiently managing air traffic in 11 per cent of the world’s airspace, as well as the provision of aviation rescue fire fighting services at Australia’s busiest airports. We are regulated by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and work closely with our customers and industry to support the long-term growth of the aviation industry.
