Passengers
16,273
Auckland to Cairns, 12 months to Jun 2026
Auckland to Cairns
New Zealand · 418 months of data from Apr 1987 · Cairns to Auckland
Both directions
34,536
including Cairns to Auckland
Flight time
5h 35m
55m longer than the return
Load factor
76%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026
16,273 passengers flew Auckland to Cairns in the 12 months to Jun 2026, out of 34,536 on the route in both directions. Traffic leans outbound: 18,263 departing against 16,273 arriving. Flights Auckland to Cairns run 76% full, against 85% coming back. This route has been reported for 35 years.
Passenger history milestones
Recorded milestones use this city-pair passenger series, with both directions combined. A first positive record is not a service-launch date; complete calendar years require all twelve observed, non-null months.
First positive passenger record
Apr 1987
first recorded month with passengers > 0
Peak complete year
2012
78,046 passengers
Latest complete year
2017
46,539 passengers
The route
Distances are true from Cairns; the ring marks the distance to Auckland.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Auckland to Cairns is 5h 35m gate to gate, over 3,619 km. Coming back takes 4h 40m — a difference of 55m, so this direction is the slower one.
Scheduled block time — gate to gate, not time in the air — taken from the current timetable for this leg. Long-haul flights are often timetabled differently in each direction because of winds aloft, so the return is not always the same length. Check your own booking for the flight you are taking.
Flight numbers on this route
1 flight number currently scheduled from Auckland to Cairns. These are the numbers you book under.
Not a daily service — this week it is scheduled on Mon, Thu and Sat (3 departures).
Air New Zealand · 1 · Airbus A320
NZ161
Current timetable as at 2026-09-06
Timetables change, and these carry no punctuality figures of their own — no on-time data is published for international flights at all. The passenger and load factor figures above cover the route, not any single flight number.
Passengers, 1987 to 2026
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
To Jun 2026 · Marks show industry events
How full were the flights?
Inbound load factor, read as a floor rather than an exact figure. Some flights on this pair also carried passengers to and from other cities, and their seats cannot be split between those journeys. Dividing by every seat on every aircraft that touched the route gives the lowest the true figure can be, so actual occupancy is at or above the line. Seat data begins in 2009, so this series is shorter than the passenger chart above.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Load factor: seats data from 2009
When is this route busiest?
Average passengers by calendar month over the last ten years, relative to the annual average.
Freight
Tonnes of air freight carried on this route — a dimension the domestic data does not have at all.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
To Jun 2026
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 10,568 · Jul 2012 |
| Data coverage | Apr 1987 – Jun 2026 (418 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to Jun 2026 | 11 tonnes |
| Destination region | New Zealand |
No punctuality data is published for international services, so there are no cancellation or on-time figures on this page. That series covers domestic routes only.