International and domestic borders open
New airspace entrants
International travel projected to reach pre-pandemic levels in 2024-25
Slowing economic growth
Outlook
After 3 years of uncertainty, our industry is well on the path to recovery. We continue to focus on the provision of safe, efficient and sustainable services, as we deliver on our purpose – connecting people with their world safely.
Australian domestic air traffic is recovering to pre-pandemic levels. However the recovery has not been uniform, with traffic demand patterns less predictable than those prior to March 2020.
Our operating environment remains challenging while the industry continues to build capacity and establish a new normal. There remain ongoing economic and geopolitical uncertainties that affect the speed of the industry’s return to health and growth.
With China, historically our largest inbound tourist market now open, we expect Australian international air traffic to recover to pre-pandemic levels by 2024-25. The international market accounted for 50% of our pre-pandemic revenue.
The global aviation market continues to evolve, bringing new operators, technologies, aircraft types, long-term growth opportunities, and with them increased complexity. We are embracing new and innovative services to support the rapid evolution of the aviation industry.
We continue to make progress on key initiatives through our 10 change programs. These investments will transform every part of our organisation, providing a sharper focus on delivering safe, scalable, efficient and sustainable outcomes for our customers and the communities we serve.
Our purpose – connecting people with their world safely – is more important than ever. It informs and guides our response to 5 key macrotrends affecting the aviation industry that we will proactively navigate over the life of this corporate plan.
We are embracing new and innovative services to support the rapid evolution of the aviation industry.
Long-term trends
Intelligent systems have the potential to increase situational awareness and use these insights to deliver business acumen that help create hyper-personalised services for customers. Cloud technologies can be harnessed to bring together inputs from a range of different systems and assets; process large-scale data sets and simulate millions of scenarios.
Meanwhile, the impact of digital twins is expanding beyond the optimisation of individual assets and systems to drive improvements at the organisational level. We will use these technologies to transform our customer journeys while reducing the cost to serve.
Traditional and emerging aircraft will operate alongside each other, increasing the congestion and complexity of airspace. In particular, the continued growth in the number of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) in lower-altitude airspace.
Innovative and expanding use of UAS and soon-to-be introduced urban air mobility (air taxis) will be increasingly valued as economic and decarbonisation benefits are realised and road traffic congestion continues to worsen. We are working to integrate and facilitate operations in all parts of our airspace to ensure the continued safe and efficient operation of air traffic. Government, regulators, air navigation service providers and industry need to collaborate and innovate to support the recovery, maintain safety, and ensure resilience and security.
We witnessed a strong recovery in both domestic and international traffic as global and domestic borders reopened. New entrants into the domestic market have increased competition on key domestic routes, but this has not prevented airfares from rising. New headwinds from high interest rates, and potential economic deceleration have the potential to slow growth.
International travel is returning with airlines recommencing flights to Australia and others increasing frequency of their existing services. More fuel-efficient aircraft, like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, will drive recovery of ultra long-haul international flights, opening new markets. However, the outlook remains uncertain, and we continue to build a future based on scalable, flexible, safe and efficient service provision.
Expectations in relation to environmental protection are evolving, with the impacts of aircraft emissions, aircraft noise and the industry’s reliance on natural resources gaining increasing scrutiny at a global, national and community level. In response, the aviation industry is seeking to improve its sustainability, while also looking to address significant disruption.
We recognise the important role we have in minimising the impact of aviation operations on the environment and community. Our sustainability ambition centres around working with airlines and airports to help them become more efficient and environmentally sustainable, while balancing community expectations in relation to noise. As an organisation, we are planning to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
The aviation value chain continues to evolve. More than ever, decision-making and collaboration up and down that value chain will be reliant on real-time data and actionable insights. Responsiveness to change and disruption will become increasingly important as the industry evolves and innovative new technologies challenge the status quo, including a completely new set of customers in non-traditional areas.
We aim to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050.