Passengers
60,385
Cairns to Osaka, 12 months to Jun 2026
Cairns to Osaka
Japan · 359 months of data from Mar 1992 · Osaka to Cairns
Both directions
123,814
including Osaka to Cairns
Flight time
7h 30m
20m longer than the return
Load factor
87%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026
60,385 passengers flew Cairns to Osaka in the 12 months to Jun 2026, out of 123,814 on the route in both directions. Flights run about 87% full, much the same in both directions. This route has been reported for 30 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
Mar 1992
first recorded month with passengers > 0
Peak complete year
2017
143,187 passengers
Latest complete year
2025
122,139 passengers
The route
Distances are true from Cairns; the ring marks the distance to Osaka.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Cairns to Osaka is 7h 30m gate to gate, over 5,787 km. Coming back takes 7h 10m — a difference of 20m, 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 Cairns to Osaka. These are the numbers you book under.
Not a daily service — this week it is scheduled on Mon, Wed, Fri and Sun (4 departures).
Jetstar · 1 · Boeing 787-8
JQ15
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, 1992 to 2026
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.
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.
To Jun 2026
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 17,213 · Jan 2024 |
| Data coverage | Mar 1992 – Jun 2026 (359 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to Jun 2026 | 382 tonnes |
| Destination region | Japan |
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.