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Perth Airport has posted a $110 million full-year profit for 2023, driven by strong passenger numbers.
The airport saw almost 14.2 million passengers in FY2023, up 6.8 million on the previous year and 8.3 million on FY21, which saw the worst of the COVID-19 border closures. The profit comes despite revenue per passenger remaining below pre-COVID levels.
Aviation services revenue was back in the black after a FY21 loss and a break-even result in FY22, while retail and parking revenue also saw a strong recovery.
“We predicted last year that our financial performance would steadily improve as we moved beyond the border restrictions imposed by COVID and people became more willing to travel,” said acting chief executive officer Kate Holsgrove.
“The FIFO-based regional aviation market continues to perform remarkably strongly and we have worked hard to re-establish international connections.
“In FY23 alone, we saw the return of Qatar and Emirates’ A380 aircraft, the first Philippine Airlines Manila flight, new services to Jakarta and Denpasar from Indonesia Air Asia and Citilink, and increased capacity on the Singapore Airlines service to Singapore.”
On the domestic side, interstate passenger numbers are also almost back to pre-COVID levels, Holsgrove added.
“Interstate travel numbers have to an extent been suppressed due to high airline prices and a lack of airline capacity but that is slowly turning around,” she said.
“With our average aviation revenue at just $14.18 per passenger, these results again confirm that the high airfares faced by Australian travellers have not been caused by airport charges.
“This relatively modest airport charge for FY23 covered a time when the ACCC reported that domestic airlines had doubled or even tripled prices on popular domestic routes.”
The airport earlier this year reported that international and interstate passenger numbers in June 2023 were down only 11 per cent and 5 per cent, respectively, on the same period in 2019, while regional traffic surged.
