One definition first, because it is the thing most reporting of this data gets wrong. A passenger movement is not a passenger. BITRE counts arrivals and departures separately, and it counts aircraft the same way, so a plane that lands and later takes off is two aircraft movements. Because both sides are counted on the same basis, dividing one by the other gives a clean figure: the average number of passengers on a flight arriving at or departing from that airport.
The two airports
| Airport and year | Passenger movements | Aircraft movements | Passengers per flight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coffs Harbour 2018-19 | 396,392 | 5,720 | 69.3 |
| Coffs Harbour 2022-23 | 283,444 | 7,485 | 37.9 |
| Coffs Harbour 2023-24 | 263,141 | 6,630 | 39.7 |
| Coffs Harbour 2024-25 | 250,298 | 5,911 | 42.3 |
| Port Macquarie 2018-19 | 214,497 | 4,434 | 48.4 |
| Port Macquarie 2022-23 | 191,862 | 5,988 | 32.0 |
| Port Macquarie 2023-24 | 226,932 | 5,529 | 41.0 |
| Port Macquarie 2024-25 | 190,020 | 4,852 | 39.2 |
What the two columns do differently
Against 2018-19, Coffs Harbour's passenger movements are down 36.9 per cent and its aircraft movements are up 3.3 per cent. Port Macquarie's passengers are down 11.4 per cent and its aircraft movements are up 9.4 per cent. Both airports are being served by at least as many flights as before the pandemic, carrying substantially fewer people.
The per-flight figure is where that shows up. Coffs Harbour ran at 69.3 passengers a flight in 2018-19 and 42.3 in 2024-25. Port Macquarie ran at 48.4 and now runs at 39.2. The low point for both was 2022-23, at 37.9 and 32.0, and both have recovered some of it since while passenger totals kept falling.
That combination has a small number of possible explanations and this dataset cannot choose between them. Smaller aircraft on the same routes would produce it. So would the same aircraft flying emptier. So would a changed mix of route and operator. BITRE publishes movements and passengers by airport and nothing about aircraft type, seats, load factor, route or airline, so anyone who tells you which of those it is, is telling you something this file does not contain.
The year that stands out is 2024-25
Port Macquarie had very nearly recovered. Its 2023-24 figure of 226,932 was 1.1 per cent below its 2013-14 all-time peak of 229,407. Then it fell to 190,020, a drop of 16.3 per cent in a single year. Coffs Harbour fell too, by 4.9 per cent, in its second consecutive year of decline.
One thing sits in BITRE's own explanatory notes beside that year and we are putting it there without drawing a conclusion from it: Bonza commenced operations on 31 January 2023 and ceased operations in April 2024. That places the airline's entire life inside 2022-23 and 2023-24, and makes 2024-25 the first full financial year without it. Whether Bonza served either of these airports, and how much traffic it carried if it did, is not in this file.
We tried to test that and could not. BITRE publishes a monthly airport file, which would show whether the fall lines up with April 2024, and it covers only 21 airports. Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie are not among them. For airports this size the annual file is the whole of the public record, which is worth knowing before anyone promises you a month-by-month answer.
What this is good for
Two things, and the second is the more useful. The headline fall at Coffs Harbour is real and large, and anyone arguing about the airport's future should be arguing about a third of its passengers rather than a rounding error. But the flight count says the connection itself has not been cut: the services are running, at a frequency at or above 2018-19, and the aircraft on them are carrying about six people in ten of what they used to. Those are different problems with different fixes, and the number that distinguishes them is published once a year and free.
What to watch
The 2025-26 edition, for whether Port Macquarie's single-year fall repeats or corrects, and whether Coffs Harbour makes it three years of decline. And the passengers-per-flight figure, which has now risen at Coffs for two years running even as the totals fell, and which will tell you whether the aircraft are filling back up before the totals do.
Sources
- Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, Airport traffic data, financial years 1985-86 to 2024-25 (xlsx, downloaded and read 25 August 2026): every passenger and aircraft movement figure above, for Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie, from the Airport Passengers and Aircraft Movements sheets; Port Macquarie's all-time peak of 229,407 in 2013-14; and, from the Explanatory Notes sheet, that the publication covers scheduled Regular Public Transport services only, that a passenger movement is the sum of arrivals and departures, that services in 2020-21 and 2021-22 were severely affected by COVID-19, and that Bonza commenced operations on 31 January 2023 and ceased in April 2024.
- Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, Aviation airport traffic data, monthly to March 2026 (xlsx, downloaded and read 25 August 2026): that the monthly series covers 21 airports and that neither Coffs Harbour nor Port Macquarie is one of them.
- Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics, Airport traffic data (index page, read 25 August 2026): that the annual file above is the current edition.
How we did this
Everything comes from two sheets of one spreadsheet, read directly rather than through any summary. Passengers per flight is ours, and it is passenger movements divided by aircraft movements for the same airport and year. That division is only meaningful because BITRE counts both on the same arrivals-plus-departures basis, and it gives an average across every scheduled flight at the airport, not a load factor: it mixes how large the aircraft are with how full they are, and the file cannot separate those. Percentage changes are ours and are rounded to one decimal place: 250,298 against 396,392 is a fall of 36.9 per cent, 5,911 against 5,720 a rise of 3.3 per cent, 190,020 against 214,497 a fall of 11.4 per cent, 4,852 against 4,434 a rise of 9.4 per cent, and 190,020 against 226,932 a fall of 16.3 per cent. We use 2018-19 as the pre-COVID reference because BITRE records 2020-21 and 2021-22 as severely affected and 2019-20 contains the start of the pandemic. The figures are Regular Public Transport only and exclude charter and other non-scheduled flying. We have not sought comment from either airport, from any airline, or from the councils that own them, and we have deliberately offered no explanation for the fall, because this dataset does not contain one.