Brisbane to Emerald
BNE → EMD · 653 km · 143 flights a month · Emerald to Brisbane
Punctuality: 12 months to Aug 2026
Flights between Brisbane and Emerald carried 17,088 passengers in both directions in Jul 2026, ranking 46th of the 61 routes with reported traffic that month. Over the 12 months to Aug 2026, 2.2% of flights from Brisbane to Emerald were cancelled, close to the national average of 2.0%. In the published records for Sep 2025–Aug 2026, QantasLink recorded 2.6% cancellations across 1,400 scheduled flights, compared with Virgin Australia's 0.3% across 314 scheduled flights in this direction. These are observed samples, not a forecast. Direction matters here: Emerald→Brisbane departs on time 90.3% of the time against 86.1% coming back. The route is busiest in October and quietest in January.
The route
653 km great-circle · 1h 30m typical
Punctuality by airline
12 months to Aug 2026. Qantas and QantasLink are reported separately in the source data and are shown that way here — on many routes the difference between them is large.
| Airline | Group | Flights | Cancelled | On time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| QantasLink | Qantas Group | 1,400 | 2.6% | 87.1% |
| Virgin Australia | Virgin Australia Group | 314 | 0.3% | 81.8% |
Does the direction matter?
On this route it does. Delays build up through the day, so the aircraft flying the return leg is often already behind schedule. Cancellations, by contrast, usually take out both legs — which is why those figures barely differ.
| Direction | On time | Cancelled | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brisbane → Emerald | 86.1% | 2.2% | 1,714 |
| Emerald → Brisbane | 90.3% | 2.7% | 1,713 |
A 4.2 point gap in on-time departures · 12 months to Aug 2026
Cancellations over time
Punctuality data begins Nov 2003 and runs to Aug 2026. Gaps are months with no reported services, not missing data.
Passengers, 2012 to 2026
Traffic: to Jul 2026 · Marks show industry events
Passenger figures count both directions together — Brisbane to Emerald and back. The published statistics do not separate them. Cancellations, punctuality and flight numbers above are for Brisbane to Emerald only.
When is this route busiest?
Average passengers by calendar month, relative to the annual average. 2020 and 2021 are excluded — those years were a structural break, not a season, and leaving them in shifts the apparent peak month on most routes. Higher months are typically the more expensive ones to fly.
Both directions combined, as published.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Brisbane to Emerald is 1h 30m gate to gate, over 653 km. The return leg is scheduled at 1h 20m — the two directions differ by 10m, so this way round is the slower one.
This is scheduled block time — from leaving the gate to reaching it at the other end — not time in the air, and not a substitute for checking your own booking. It is a median across the flights currently timetabled on this leg.
Flight numbers on this route
10 flight numbers currently scheduled from Brisbane to Emerald. These are the numbers you book under — some are operated by a regional partner such as QantasLink or Alliance.
Typical flight time 1h 30m.
Scheduled every day this week — 32 departures in all.
Qantas · 8 · Embraer 190, Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 / DHC-8-400, De Havilland Canada DHC-8-400 Dash 8Q
QF1872 · QF1926 · QF1928 · QF1930 · QF1932 · QF2402 · QF2404 · QF2412
Virgin Australia · 2 · Fokker 70
VA1255 · VA1265
Current timetable as at 2026-09-06
Timetables change; these are not a booking source and carry no punctuality figures of their own. The cancellation and on-time rates above are for the route as a whole, not for any single flight number — per-flight performance is not collected.
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 26,880 · Jul 2012 |
| Pandemic low | 7,676 · Jan 2021 |
| Traffic vs 2019 average | 92.7% |
| Load factor, Jul 2026 | 69.2% |
| Aircraft trips, Jul 2026 | 329 |
| Great-circle distance | 653 km |
Traffic: to Jul 2026