Passengers
224,071
Shanghai to Sydney, 12 months to Jun 2026
Shanghai to Sydney
China · 359 months of data from Aug 1996 · Sydney to Shanghai
Both directions
443,291
including Sydney to Shanghai
Flight time
9h 50m
30m shorter than the return
Load factor
86%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026
224,071 passengers flew Shanghai to Sydney in the 12 months to Jun 2026, out of 443,291 on the route in both directions. Flights run about 86% 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
Aug 1996
first recorded month with passengers > 0
Peak complete year
2018
474,013 passengers
Latest complete year
2025
429,523 passengers
The route
Distances are true from Sydney; the ring marks the distance to Shanghai.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Shanghai to Sydney is 9h 50m gate to gate, over 7,837 km. Coming back takes 10h 20m — a difference of 30m, so this direction is the quicker 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
3 flight numbers currently scheduled from Shanghai to Sydney. These are the numbers you book under.
Scheduled every day this week — 15 departures in all.
China Eastern · 2 · Airbus A350-900, Airbus A330, Airbus A330-300
MU561 · MU735
Juneyao · 1 · Boeing 787-9
HO1669
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, 1996 to 2026
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.
To Jun 2026
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 53,531 · Jan 2025 |
| Data coverage | Aug 1996 – Jun 2026 (359 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to Jun 2026 | 26,015 tonnes |
| Destination region | China |
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.