Australia and Papua New Guinea

7 cities · 3 city pairs with recent passenger traffic · 2 in the lost-route record · 9 with no post-2003 passenger record · data from Jan 1985

Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026

Passengers over time

To Jun 2026

International history milestones

Passenger milestones use complete calendar years only; a missing month stays missing and the partial current year cannot set the historical peak. Current breadth uses the global passenger window 2025-07 to 2026-06. Recorded Australian ports describe passenger records, not necessarily nonstop current services.

Cities in Papua New Guinea

• Alotau
• Daru
• Kieta
• Lae
• Mount Hagen
• Port Moresby
• Rabaul

Airlines flying this route

Click any column heading to sort ⇅

12 months to Jun 2026

Shares are of passengers carried, not of seats or flights, and they cover every Australian airport. Airlines are reported against destinations rather than city pairs, so these figures cannot be broken down further by city.

Airlines that used to fly here

Carried passengers between Australia and Papua New Guinea at some point since 1985, none in the 12 months to Jun 2026.

• Virgin Australia — 495,325 passengers, Nov 2008 to Mar 2020
• Airlines PNG — 105,307 passengers, Nov 2005 to Nov 2013
• Flight West Airlines — 14,569 passengers, Oct 1998 to Dec 1999
• MBA Pty Ltd — 1,641 passengers, May 1997 to Oct 1997

Recent passenger traffic

Positive passenger traffic appears within the latest year of the published BITRE series. This is record recency, not real-time operating status.

Routes Australia has lost

No passenger traffic recorded in the comparable published series for over a year. See the lost-route record for the full methodology.

• Townsville ↔ Port Moresby — passenger traffic last recorded Sep 2018
• Cairns ↔ Rabaul — passenger traffic last recorded May 2015

No post-2003 passenger record

These retained city pairs have no positive passenger record in the comparable series from January 2003 onward. Some have freight or mail records, and some appear only in the earlier passenger series.

• Cairns ↔ Kieta
• Cairns ↔ Mount Hagen
• Cairns ↔ Lae
• Cairns ↔ Alotau
• Cairns ↔ Daru
• Melbourne ↔ Port Moresby
• Adelaide ↔ Port Moresby
• Darwin ↔ Port Moresby
• Perth ↔ Port Moresby