International airlines fill less than one in five seats

International airlines still servicing Australia were filling less than one in five seats in September as passenger numbers plummeted to just over 62,000. New statistics released by the Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics show seat utilization on international flights fell from 83 percent in September 2019, to 19.1 percent for the same month in 2020. The total seats available fell 92.4 percent to 325,687 while passenger traffic was down 98.2 percent, to 62,120, from almost 3.5 million in September 2019. READ: Virgin celebrates ownership change with 500,000 sale fares. The precipitous drops — and the fact Qantas is not flying internationally — gave Doha-based Qatar Airways the biggest share of passenger traffic in September at 17.3 percent. This was followed by Air New Zealand (11.6 percent), Emirates (11 percent), China Southern (6.9 percent) and Singapore Airlines (6.7 percent). Despite the nation’s COVID restrictions, some 43 international carriers were still operating to Australia, although five of those are dedicated freight carriers. The top city-pairs were Sydney-Guangzhou, Sydney-Doha, Sydney-Auckland, Sydney-Dubai and Melbourne-Auckland.