Western Australia – A Minefield of Trends and a Glimmer of Hope

The two largest airports in Western Australia, Perth and Broome, have seen scheduled aviation capacity decline this year. At Perth, capacity is down by 2.1% for the year-to-date, and the same figure for Broome is 2.4%. If the year continues like this, 2017 will see capacity somewhere between what it was in 2012 and 2013.  That’s a lot of years with effectively no growth and bucks the trend in most major developed countries.

With Qantas planning to operate a headline-grabbing, non-stop, 14,498km Kangaroo route between Perth and London from March 2018, it would be right to ask if the timing is right. But the capacity trend is just one trend among many. Unpicking what those trends are and what they mean for air service development reveals an opportunity.

The primary cause for the stagnant capacity growth is the ailing Western Australia economy. While the State rode the boom that came with mining and mineral extraction investment, capacity grew. Now that the boom has ended, Western Australia’s economy has slowed, now lagging other Australian states. No doubt this has affected outbound travel, both for leisure and business, as well as inbound business traffic with an impact on scheduled capacity.

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