Auckland to Cairns

New Zealand · 417 months of data from Apr 1987 · Cairns to Auckland

Traffic: 12 months to May 2026

15,525 passengers flew Auckland to Cairns in the 12 months to May 2026, out of 32,690 on the route in both directions. Traffic leans outbound: 17,165 departing against 15,525 arriving. Flights Auckland to Cairns run 77% full, against 85% coming back. This route has been reported for 35 years.

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

To May 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.

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.

To May 2026

The route in numbers

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.

Related routes

From Cairns

• Cairns ↔ Tokyo
• Cairns ↔ Osaka
• Cairns ↔ Singapore
• Cairns ↔ Nagoya
• Cairns ↔ Denpasar

To Auckland

• Sydney ↔ Auckland
• Melbourne ↔ Auckland
• Brisbane ↔ Auckland
• Gold Coast ↔ Auckland

Airport data

• Cairns Airport