The past year was one of recovery for the Australian aviation sector, as the significant disruption associated with the pandemic progressively eased and the travelling public returned to the skies in increasing numbers. Total movements increased by 22% including a 29% increase in domestic traffic, which averaged 90% of pre-pandemic levels over the 12-month period and ended the year in line with pre-pandemic levels.
Regional airports that service domestic leisure demand, interstate migration and mining regions experienced strong growth through the year, while international operations, which have historically accounted for around half our revenue, more than doubled off a very low base. International volumes averaged 70% of pre-pandemic levels over the full year and finished the period 28% below pre-pandemic levels at our busiest capital-city airports, signifying that the recovery still has some way to go.
We are operating in a different environment than before the pandemic, with less predictability in traffic patterns and the rate of recovery varying widely across the Australian network. As the aviation industry continued to recover, our airways revenue grew by 57% year-on-year. Because we continued to deliver our full services across the same airspace, with lower than pre-COVID levels of traffic, our costs outweighed revenue for the financial year. Noting that the industry was still recovering, we continued to share their pain and have sustained and built on our cost efficiency practices, and our balance sheet was further strengthened by an equity injection of $495 million from the government in December 2022. For the year, we recorded a $205.8 million underlying net loss after tax, which, together with continued progress on our cost effectiveness programs, was a 41% improvement in our bottom line over the prior year.
We maintain our focus on delivering safe, efficient and sustainable services, while at the same time transforming and repositioning our organisation to meet both the current and future needs of the industry and all those who use our skies.
Our focus on the provision of our services delivered another year with zero significant attributable safety occurrences, and our Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFF) crews saved 15 lives and responded to 398 aviation-related incidents among the 4428 callouts they received.
We always prioritise the safety of our skies and our people – a commitment that grows in importance as the upward traffic trend continues, with July recording the 2 busiest days in commercial aviation history by number of flights globally.
We acknowledge that in navigating the challenges and uncertainties of the return to industry growth, the efficiency and consistency of our services have at times fallen short of the standards expected by ourselves, our customers and the community. We are working hard to build greater capacity to address this issue.
We continue to work closely with our customers and stakeholders to support the recovery and sustainable growth of aviation, and we are holding ourselves to high standards of transparency and accountability for our ongoing performance to ensure we effectively serve our customers and the travelling public.
This includes our Performance and Customer Experience (PACE) program, comprising 30 projects designed to increase network capacity by improving the utilisation and numbers of our operational staff and accelerating their competency acquisition.
In May we initiated quarterly Aviation Network Roundtable meetings connecting senior aviation leaders to collaboratively review and improve the Australian air transport network performance. We recently launched the Aviation Network Overview report, which will continue to be published monthly to outline the factors shaping our operating environment as well as key aspects of the national network performance. These engagement efforts will continue to foster and shape opportunities to improve outcomes for the aviation industry and the travelling public.
As part of the ongoing transformation of our business, over the past year we have continued to make progress against our organisational improvement and strategic change programs.
Our OneSKY partnership with the Department of Defence to deliver a world-first harmonised civil and military air traffic management system for Australian airspace is making significant progress on construction and installation activities. This includes the completion of the new Air Traffic Services Centres and support facilities in Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne; hardware deployment nearing completion at several civil and military sites; and the successful demonstration of initial software development and integration.
Airservices is now working with Defence and Thales to implement a streamlined delivery strategy, which will simplify the program and provide greater certainty for successful implementation.
To enable OneSKY’s success, we have continued to replace end-of-life communications infrastructure, including copper-based services. Airservices is developing our next-generation telecommunications network architecture to deliver greater resilience and reliability as part of our Enterprise Network Modernisation Program.
As the use of uncrewed aircraft systems continues to grow in Australian airspace, we have developed and conducted successful in-field trials of a Flight Information Management System with industry partners to support the safe integration of uncrewed aircraft into shared airspace. We have also trialled an Integrated Drone Surveillance System at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport using radio frequency, radar and optical cameras to detect and identify drones.
Airservices is preparing to introduce Digital Aerodrome Services (DAS) technology at Canberra Airport in late 2025 and Western Sydney International Airport in mid-2026. DAS uses cameras positioned around the airfield to enable the operation of a digital automatic detection and alerting capability, assisting air traffic controllers to standardise and evolve the way we monitor and manage airfield activity.
As part of our uplift of our ARFF capability we are leveraging new technology to enhance our service delivery and have begun modernising our Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting services fleet. This includes the procurement of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles equipped with high reach extendable turret technology for Western Sydney International Airport.
We are working with our industry partners to deliver Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) capability to our 4 major airports of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. By sharing accurate, real-time data and insights, A-CDM will make it faster and simpler to manage aircraft movements and save around $120 million worth of fuel over a 10-year period. The platform will be available to our partners by October 2023 and implementation is expected to commence by July 2024.
During the year we commenced implementation of our Noise Action Plan for Brisbane, which aims to reduce the impact of Brisbane Airport aircraft operations on communities. We are continuing to engage with Brisbane communities on options to improve noise outcomes, including greater operations over water and noise sharing options.
We are also working with our airport customers in Melbourne and Perth as they progress plans to deliver new runway projects in coming years, and we have supported the development of the preliminary flight path design for the new Western Sydney International Airport, which will be subject to Environmental Impact Statement community engagement in late 2023.
Airservices’ obligations when planning and implementing changes to flight paths include minimising the impact of aircraft operations on communities, effective community engagement and informing the community of the development and implementation of significant changes to air navigation. We take these obligations seriously and have implemented improvements to our flight path design and community engagement practice to enable ‘community-by-design’ thinking in flight path planning, and more effective engagement and interaction with the community.
To enhance our processes around community engagement on flight path and airspace changes, during the year we worked closely with the community to finalise a new national engagement approach for the development and implementation of flight path changes. The recently completed national Community Engagement Standard defines the best-practice process we will apply to all future changes.
We remain focused on developing a culture that is inclusive, diverse and respectful. During the year programs such as Safe Place continued to deliver essential psychological, wellbeing and investigative support to all Airservices people. Propel, a new leadership program focused on leading with courage and inclusivity, was rolled out to our service delivery leaders. We also established a Peer Assistance Network, which gives Airservices people the chance to speak informally and confidentially to a trained colleague who understands the aviation safety industry.
Over the course of the year, we also completed several initiatives aimed at fostering diversity and inclusion. We conducted ARFF recruitment drives aimed at attracting female and Indigenous candidates, and we created our first Indigenous Career Pathway ATC traineeship program. We strengthened our Elevate network for LGBTIQ+ employees and allies, and relaunched Yakka Bunji, a network for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff.
On behalf of the Board and Executive, we thank the entire Airservices team for their ongoing efforts in delivering safe, efficient and sustainable services for the aviation industry and our communities.
