Passengers
91,980
Queenstown to Brisbane, 12 months to May 2026
Queenstown to Brisbane
New Zealand · 228 months of data from Jul 1995 · Brisbane to Queenstown
Both directions
190,675
including Brisbane to Queenstown
Flight time
3h 50m
20m longer than the return
Load factor
81%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to May 2026
91,980 passengers flew Queenstown to Brisbane in the 12 months to May 2026, out of 190,675 on the route in both directions. Flights run about 81% full, much the same in both directions.
The route
Distances are true from Brisbane; the ring marks the distance to Queenstown.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Queenstown to Brisbane is 3h 50m gate to gate, over 2,400 km. Coming back takes 3h 30m — 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
4 flight numbers currently scheduled from Queenstown to Brisbane. These are the numbers you book under.
Scheduled every day this week — 17 departures in all.
Qantas · 2 · Boeing 737-800, Boeing 737-800 (winglets), Airbus A320-200
QF186 · QF5856
Virgin Australia · 2 · Boeing 737, Boeing 737-800 (winglets), Boeing 737-8MAX
VA116 · VA118
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, 1995 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
| Busiest month on record | 23,778 · Aug 2025 |
| Data coverage | Jul 1995 – May 2026 (228 months) |
| 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.