Passengers
11,956
Sydney to Tongatapu, 12 months to Jun 2026
Sydney to Tongatapu
Tonga · 397 months of data from Sep 1990 · Tongatapu to Sydney
Both directions
24,140
including Tongatapu to Sydney
Flight time
4h 25m
1h 15m shorter than the return
Load factor
84%
seats filled on this leg
Traffic: 12 months to Jun 2026
11,956 passengers flew Sydney to Tongatapu in the 12 months to Jun 2026, out of 24,140 on the route in both directions. Flights Sydney to Tongatapu run 84% full, against 78% coming back. This route has been reported for 33 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
Sep 1990
first recorded month with passengers > 0
Peak complete year
2016
25,684 passengers
Latest complete year
2025
23,855 passengers
The route
Distances are true from Sydney; the ring marks the distance to Tongatapu.
How long is the flight?
Scheduled flight time from Sydney to Tongatapu is 4h 25m gate to gate, over 3,589 km. Coming back takes 5h 40m — a difference of 1h 15m, 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 Tongatapu. These are the numbers you book under.
Not a daily service — this week it is scheduled on Tue and Sat (2 departures).
Qantas · 1 · Boeing 737-800
QF189
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, 1990 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.
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 | 2,909 · Jan 2026 |
| Data coverage | Sep 1990 – Jun 2026 (397 months) |
| Freight, 12 months to Jun 2026 | 4 tonnes |
| Destination region | Tonga |
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.