The Australian Domestic Air Traveller: A Profile

The May Report thus concluded that by far the overall majority of air travel in Australia is undertaken for business reasons by people travelling at the expense of their employer. The survey found that these people mostly travel alone and stay away from home for two to six nights. Most of these people are male white-collar workers aged 25-44 years. Leisure travellers on the other hand were most likely to be female and under 35 or older than 55 with most of their travel being flown on discounted fares.

The Report also found that the frequency with which people travel by air tends to rise steadily between the ages of 18 and 44 years, decreasing dramatically after that. Most young people (18-24yrs) travel primarily for holiday purposes while those aged between 25 and 54 years engage primarily in business travel. The proportion of passengers over 55 years of age travelling for business and leisure purposes is fairly evenly distributed.

Among Australian residents who travel by air, residents of the ACT do so most frequently, followed by those from Victoria and NSW. This is explained by the fact that these travellers fly mostly for business reasons. Residents of other areas, especially the NT, SA, Tasmania and Queensland take proportionally more non-business trips.

Regarding age, the Report concluded that travellers aged between 25 and 44 years dominated the domestic air transport market. Though this group represents only 43% of the total adult (18 years +) population, it was found to have taken approximately 58% of all air trips during the year. By contrast, people over the age of 55 took a mere 12% of trips even though this group constitutes some 27% of the total adult population.

The Report also served to dispel some odd statistics that had been evolved from a Bureau of Transport Economics Study conducted during the early eighties that suggested somewhat blandly, that a mere 3% of the adult population travelled by air in any one year. Most industry observers queried the validity of this somewhat minuscule figure at the time and were heartened to see the May Report come up with a more realistic (and realistically assessed) figure of 25%. Thus the Enquiry’s surveys indicated that at least 25% of the total population had flown at least once in the 1985 period. Virtually the same figure also came out of the United States at that period suggesting little difference between the overall air transport passenger profile for the two nations. Overall in Australia, the Report indicated that 81% of the total adult population had flown at any time in an airliner as against 70% for the USA and 69% in New Zealand. However, the market was dominated to some extent by a small minority of travellers. Thus it was found that a mere 4% of travellers took 30% of total journeys while 10% of travellers accounted for a massive 50% of the total market. It is indeed true to say that many senior executives travel several times weekly and is another reason why the Ansett Golden Wing’s and Australian Flight Deck clubs now boast memberships approaching the 50,000 mark.

As to the make-up of these travellers and who gets to carry the varying proportions, the Review indicated that Ansett continues to dominate the business market with a 53% share versus 47% for Australians though we appreciate that this is a figure that the latter would probably argue about at length! The share of the holiday market was in Australia’s favour, probably also helped by their excellent Rain Check holiday package programme. While the two majors were fairly similar in their respective passenger characteristics their budding competitor, East West, uplifted a mere 26% of pax on business with 35% being on package holidays and 20% making up the VFR (Visiting Friends & Relatives) market. The overall results for all airline activity was 55% for business, 24% for holiday, . 15% VFR and 6% other. What this indicates is that given an overall liberalisation of its route structure, East West could greatly expand upon its existing business market base (bearing in mind that not all business travellers are in the Robert Holmes a Court league) while the two majors could greatly increase their hon business leisure travel market through a greater emphasis on the marketing and availability of discount fares.

From our own experience, we have found that many people choose not to fly because they are unaware of the range of discount fares that even now are available. While many of these fares are not readily available at short notice they do exist in ever-increasing numbers thanks at least to the numerous stern criticisms made of the two majors’ attitudes to such fares during the course of the Report. Certainly, we and many others believe there is a large and almost untapped leisure market that could be slowly taken from road and rail if some form of airway liberalisation was introduced. Let us hope that this may well be the case.