Adelaide international

But the airport’s business development team is talking to a range of airlines from Asia, including Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, as well.

Gaining services from China Southern was a major milestone for the airport company, following about six years of negotiations with Chinese carriers.

The start of direct services – initially three a week but expected to bring additional frequencies as passenger numbers and cargo business increase – was hailed as a breakthrough and the campaign to attract the airlines was underpinned by figures showing 102,150 indirect passenger movements a year between South Australia and China.

In addition, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that China is South Australia’s second largest air freight market, after the US, with loads growing by 52 percent to 3538 tonnes worth about $120 million in 2015-16.

Of this, about 2050 tonnes of export cargo – led by food products and wine – were flown into China from SA, mostly via Hong Kong on direct Cathay Pacific flights and the rest via Sydney and Melbourne.

China Southern will add at least 30 tonnes of cargo capacity weekly with its present schedule, raising hopes of further growth in trade, with perishables such as fresh fruit and vegetables, seafood and meat being products expected to gain from direct deliveries.

Now the campaign to attract a US carrier to operate direct services into Adelaide is being based on a significantly larger number of passenger movements between South Australia and the US, which were logged at 121,560 in the year to June 30, 2016.

And Adelaide Airport’s push is further strengthened by 24,140 passenger movements between SA and Canada over the same period.

Adelaide Airport Ltd’s head of aviation business development, Jonathan Cheong, believes the North American figures justify direct services, and the airport has been talking to the major US airlines serving Australia, as well as Qantas.

None has committed to Adelaide yet, and AAL’s chief executive Mark Young previously told Australian Aviation the company was taking a realistic view of the prospects for a direct link to the US West Coast.

Young believes the Boeing 787 offers the best solution for the long-distance route of about 13,160 kilometres between Adelaide and Los Angeles but he expects it may be a couple of years before 787 services are “bedded down” on existing trans-Pacific routes before airlines will contemplate new destinations such as Adelaide.

However, Cheong – who was appointed to the new Adelaide Airport position in October, 2015, from a similar role at Sydney Airport – says all South Australia’s top international markets, including the US, are “under-served or untapped”.

At present, the main markets are Asia, with 49 percent of traffic, followed by Europe at 23 percent, New Zealand and Oceania 13 percent and North America at 11 percent.

But, Cheong points out, the North American market is growing strongly and the latest SA Tourist Commission figures show visits from the region rose by 34 percent to about 54,000 in 2015-16, including 48,000 from the US, and their expenditure climbed 16 percent to $94 million over the year.

While the SATC focus is on inbound traffic, people travelling to the US from Adelaide account for 73 percent of the total movements, making the advent of direct services a time-saving boon for outbound traffic in bypassing Sydney or Melbourne as well as a marketing tool for the SA tourist industry.

Importantly, as well as indirect passenger traffic, the US is South Australia’s largest air freight market by value, up 25.4 percent to $402 million in the past financial year, in the airport’s total freight trade of $1.5 billion in 2015-16, and the US accounted for 2658 tonnes – almost all trans-shipped through the eastern seaboard airports, adding time and cost for exporters and importers alike.

Those are impressive figures to back the arguments for direct services, exceeding the numbers used to convince China Southern to enter the Adelaide market.

Meanwhile, AAL is canvassing the prospects for attracting more airlines from the Asian region.

At present it has established services from Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines and Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific, and now China Southern since its launch of Adelaide services in December.

Both Jetstar and Tigerair serve Bali from Adelaide but there’s no direct flight to Jakarta, despite Indonesia accounting for almost 174,000 movements through Adelaide in 2015-16.

Also on Cheong’s radar are India and Thailand, each with more than 57,000 indirect annual movements, Japan 42,490, Vietnam 34,640 and even the Philippines 25,790.

Philippine Airlines serves Darwin and Brisbane on a triangular route four times a week and Cheong recently discussed with airline management in Manila the possibility of extending that service to Adelaide, which has a significant Filipino population. Any such development is likely to await the airline’s proposed direct Brisbane-Manila services from 2018, however.

Although Air Asia X dropped its Adelaide-Kuala Lumpur service in January 2015, after only 15 months of unprofitable operations, Mark Young is keen to see a return of low-cost carriers on South-East Asian routes, and has described the case for Adelaide-Bangkok as “compelling”. Flights between Adelaide and India are a medium-term target, he adds.

The present seven internationally-based carriers serving Adelaide will be joined by Fiji Airways in June, proving twice-weekly flights between Adelaide and Nadi.

The Fijian airline will operate the route with 164-seat Boeing 737-800s and, like Air New Zealand, will offer a one-stop route across the Pacific to the US, although the bulk of the traffic is expected to be tourism to Fiji.

Young says last year’s start of non-stop flights by Qatar and China Southern, and the addition of Fiji Airways services this year, should take Adelaide’s international passenger numbers to one million in 2017-18.

In the 2016 calendar year, international passenger traffic rose 5.9 percent – or about 50,000 passengers – to 924,000, taking total traffic to 8 million for the first time.