Airport business proves strong despite slump in neighbouring airports

Published on 10 June 2015

Rockhampton Airport has defied the Regional Queensland trend in mining areas with solid passenger numbers in the past three months.

With the current mining downturn and TC Marcia in February, Rockhampton’s passenger numbers from March to May remained strong, stacking up similar to the figures reported during the same period last year.

Cr Neil Fisher said this is a great result, considering many other airports associated with the resources industry are experiencing double digit decreases in passenger numbers.

“During the past three months we had exactly 163,407 passengers through our airport,” Cr Fisher said.

“Beef Week did play a part in boosting the numbers, but overall these figures reflect a strong flow of business traffic, which is very reassuring during tough times.”

The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics data recently released the Top Fifty Regional Airports statistics for March 2015, with Rockhampton Airport ranked as eighth in the country.

The report shows Rockhampton experienced a decrease in passenger numbers of only -1.3% whilst others decreased by up to -28.7%.

The results for April’s monthly report remained similar with an increase to 55,784 passengers during May with the global interest of Beef Week.

Council conducted a local survey on 1058 passengers during mid-2014 which showed 87% of Rockhampton’s departing passengers have flown out of Rockhampton before.

The survey also reported 15% of passengers are employed in the mining resource sector and 14% are employed in the Health and Community Services sector.

Cr Fisher said he is confident passenger movement between Rockhampton and Brisbane will always remain steady.

“This is evident that we have business traffic all year round which reflects the diversity of our Region and I am positive these statistics will grow with our Region,” he said.