I pulled data from Airservices for Secondary City Airports, Regional Airports and some Towns for the latest full Year 2023. The figures on sheet WX00278 show the monthly movement figures.
WX00279
On the graph, the monthly figures are shown in bundles for each location.
I worked in a Company which had about 40 different types of Transport products and each month we would arrive in the board room at 6 am and finish at 6 pm analysing the months performance of each product. The production for the month would be decided for each product, cut back if we hadn’t sold enough stock, increased if sales were ahead, and an advertising programme introduced if we were behind along with incentives. Some businesses do this daily.
To make some sense of this we need benchmarks, so we might pick population for the City Airports. 5.2 million for Moorabbin (Melbourne), 5.1 million for Bankstown, 2.5 million for Archerfield, 1.4 million for Parafield, 2.1 million for Jandakot.
Using these benchmarks, Bankstown is holding up well against Moorabbin, Archerfield is punching above its weight, and Parafield is either sliding down or Jandakot is performing above its population base.
In general though, all reasonably stable against population catchment.
Essendon tells its own story, which we are not going to here.
Camden fits into the peri-urban character.
Then we have:
Townsville: 205,000
Mackay: 139,000
Albury/Wodonga: 100,000
Rockhampton: 84,000
Coffs Harbour: 82,000 dropping below the pack
Karratha: 21,500 punching well above the pack
Tamworth: 65,500
The Albury – Tamworth group introduces the factor of Rural activities and income groups.
Karratha gets a big boost from mining.
Roma, Queensland is one of the best examples (although I couldn’t get movements)
In the 1960’s a local was selling tickets from the back of a Ford Falcon Ute.
In 2013/14 the airport processed 254,000 passengers, ranking 29th in Australia
The population of Roma is just 6,522.
Another variable is the type of activity.
The Upper and Lower South East of South Australia produces half the Agribusiness income for the State, so we would expect airfields to do better there than in the baren areas of the north.
In the South East, in the 1960s the Naracoorte airport consisted of two sheds, this is it today,
Population of Naracoorte is 5,960.
In other areas the agribusiness is dying, the population doesn’t get the money to spend on flying and operations are shrinking.
In the mining areas, airfield operators are buying newer, bigger aircraft and running their own coaches around the towns to pick up the FIFOS.
It’s a free world; as the Mayor of the Gold Coast used to say “Two men looking out through bars, one saw mud, the other stars.”