Sydney Airport Recovery Still Stuck On The Tarmac

Sydney Airport has again shown investors the damage the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdown, and all but total closing of international and domestic borders can do to a travel reliant business.

The June traffic report from Sydney Airport yesterday showed total passenger traffic last month plunged 94.9% to just 172,000 passengers from June 2019.

There were 32,000 international passengers passing through in June, down 97.6% while the number of domestic passengers totalled 140,000 for the month, down 93.3% cent on the PCP.

While domestic passenger numbers rose noticeably in June when compared with April and May, Sydney Airport on Monday said it expects to continue to see significant reductions in passenger traffic for as long as domestic and international travel restrictions persist.

In fact, NSW is about to tighten international inbound numbers to 350 a day from 450 to fight the current spread of COVID-19 in Sydney and more regional areas.

Total traffic for the year to date has dropped 56.6% to 9.4 million passengers – almost all of that figure was due to high levels of inbound and outbound travel up to February this year.

The shares fell 1.3% to $5.40.

About Glenn Dyer

Glenn Dyer has been a finance journalist and TV producer for more than 40 years. He has worked at Maxwell Newton Publications, Queensland Newspapers, AAP, The Australian Financial Review, The Nine Network and Crikey.

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