Jake Nelson

The retrofitted planes, featuring the airline’s new “Aria Suite” business class product, have been introduced on five selected flights per week to Australia as their second destination outside of Hong Kong, following their debut on Hong Kong-London in January.

Conducted as part of the Air Force’s first iteration of regional presence deployments for the year, 11 Squadron’s P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft worked alongside the Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Hobart in the South China Sea on maritime domain awareness operations.

The route, commencing 27 June, will operate four times per week on A321neo aircraft, adding around 100,000 seats per year and bringing AirAsia Group’s total weekly Darwin flights to seven. It comes after sister airline Indonesia AirAsia announced a non-stop Denpasar service in January.

According to the ACCC’s latest Airport Monitoring Report, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth airports collectively invested $985.1 million in aeronautical facilities in 2023–24, more than half of which was accounted for by Melbourne’s $502.3 million.

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth Airports collectively brought in $2.6 billion in 2023-24, up 24.3 per cent from the previous year, though passenger numbers were still 4.7 per cent below 2018-19 levels. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane also grew their profits from aeronautical activities.

According to new BITRE data released by the Department of Transport, “restricted economy” fares, or standard economy fares, have crashed since high points in September and October following the end of Rex’s jet operations, and are now at 55.9 per cent of base period.