All monitored routes
83 domestic city pairs are monitored. 60 of them currently report punctuality. Compare passenger traffic below, or browse every route by departure city.
Australia's busiest domestic routes
Calendar year 2025 is the latest complete year in the published monthly passenger record. These figures combine both directions for each city pair.
- Melbourne ↔ Sydney led the ranking with 8,121,167 passengers in 2025.
- The Top 10 accounted for 56.8% of passengers among the 62 city pairs with a complete positive passenger record for the year.
- The Top 10 contains the same city pairs as in 2019.
| Rank | City pair | Passengers | 2019 rank | vs 2019 passengers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Melbourne ↔ Sydney | 8,121,167 | 1 | -11.55% |
| 2 | Brisbane ↔ Sydney | 4,382,963 | 2 | -9.09% |
| 3 | Brisbane ↔ Melbourne | 3,646,094 | 3 | +1.04% |
| 4 | Gold Coast ↔ Sydney | 2,527,688 | 4 | -7.52% |
| 5 | Adelaide ↔ Melbourne | 2,395,818 | 5 | -5.60% |
| 6 | Gold Coast ↔ Melbourne | 2,146,910 | 6 | +1.18% |
| 7 | Melbourne ↔ Perth | 2,109,230 | 7 | -0.04% |
| 8 | Adelaide ↔ Sydney | 1,904,858 | 8 | +1.39% |
| 9 | Perth ↔ Sydney | 1,749,314 | 9 | +3.39% |
| 10 | Hobart ↔ Melbourne | 1,460,515 | 10 | -12.55% |
| 11 | Brisbane ↔ Cairns | 1,313,044 | 11 | +1.57% |
| 12 | Brisbane ↔ Perth | 1,140,132 | 15 | +18.69% |
| 13 | Brisbane ↔ Townsville | 990,802 | 14 | -2.68% |
| 14 | Canberra ↔ Melbourne | 979,092 | 12 | -17.36% |
| 15 | Cairns ↔ Sydney | 927,134 | 13 | -14.00% |
Ranks are calculated separately each year: 62 complete positive city-pair records in 2025, 64 in 2019. An incomplete or missing 2019 record is shown as —.
Passenger figures are for each city pair in both directions combined. Missing passenger observations are not treated as zero.
Browse all monitored routes
Each city pair appears under both of its ends, linking to that direction. Passenger rankings measure volume; cancellation rankings measure operational reliability.
Adelaide
Albury
Alice Springs
Armidale
Ayers Rock
Ballina
Brisbane
Broome
Bundaberg
Burnie
Cairns
Canberra
Coffs Harbour
Darwin
Devonport
Dubbo
Emerald
Geraldton
Gladstone
Gold Coast
Hamilton Island
Hervey Bay
Hobart
Kalgoorlie
Karratha
Launceston
Mackay
Melbourne
Mildura
Moranbah
Mount Isa
Newcastle
Newman
Orange
Perth
Port Hedland
Port Lincoln
Port Macquarie
Proserpine
Rockhampton
Sunshine Coast
Sydney
Tamworth
Townsville
Wagga Wagga
Cancellation rates: 3 months to Aug 2026
These are the routes big enough to be published individually. For the longer view — how many routes and airlines Australia has had since 1985, and which parts of the network shrank — see regional aviation over forty years.