Passengers
30,042
Sydney to Port Vila, 12 months to Jun 2026
Sydney to Port Vila
Vanuatu · 474 months of data from Jan 1985 · Port Vila to Sydney
Both directions
60,018
including Port Vila to Sydney
Flight time
3h 30m
30m shorter than the return
Load factor
77%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026
30,042 passengers flew Sydney to Port Vila in the 12 months to Jun 2026, out of 60,018 on the route in both directions. Flights run about 77% full, much the same in both directions. This route has been reported for 40 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
Jan 1985
first recorded month with passengers > 0
Peak complete year
2019
80,967 passengers
Latest complete year
2025
55,116 passengers
The route
Distances are true from Sydney; the ring marks the distance to Port Vila.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Sydney to Port Vila is 3h 30m gate to gate, over 2,481 km. Coming back takes 4h — 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
1 flight number currently scheduled from Sydney to Port Vila. These are the numbers you book under.
Not a daily service — this week it is scheduled on Mon, Thu and Sat (3 departures).
Jetstar · 1 · Airbus A320
JQ123
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, 1985 to 2026
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
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.
Gaps indicate missing observations, not zero values.
To Jun 2026
The route in numbers
| Busiest month on record | 8,605 · Jul 2019 |
| Data coverage | Jan 1985 – Jun 2026 (474 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to Jun 2026 | 64 tonnes |
| Destination region | Vanuatu |
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.