Can I fly to Darwin?

If you are attempting to fly to Darwin on a commercial international flight, it will not be possible. Why not?

According to this Australian government website, Darwin is accommodating the additional return of Australians on Government facilitated commercial services.  The same website states that Darwin is not accepting passenger arrivals, so you cannot book a flight to Darwin unless you work through the government process to be on one of these special government-sponsored (DFAT) flights.

How many flights to Darwin?

How are many repatriation flights have there been to Darwin over the last few months?  See the chart below.

View chart on Tableau Public

As you can see from the chart above, most of the repatriation flights over the last three months have been to Darwin (there may have been other government-arranged flights to other cities not shown in the chart, but it appears unlikely given that other cities are under passenger arrival caps and the government most likely wants to make their repatriation flights count by filling them to capacity).

For a breakdown of the exact flights to Darwin, use the filters on the chart below. From the filters on the right-hand side of the chart. For the Destination filter, make sure only Darwin is checked. Each line on the chart represents on flight on a particular date. Hover over a line (i.e. flight) to get the full details of that flight.

View the chart on Tableau Public

Ticket price to Darwin

To understand what the ticket prices to Darwin are like, we first need to work out: How many passengers, on average, were on each flight to Darwin in July?

Let’s work through the process of finding out together. Back in March 2021, this aviation news website reported that the Darwin’s Howard Springs quarantine facility had a capacity of at least 850 passengers per fortnight, but that it would more than double capacity to 2000 per fortnight by April or May. A few days ago, ABC News reported that the facility now has the capacity for 2000 overseas arrivals and that it was nearly at capacity now.

Therefore, we can assume that 2000 overseas arrivals per fortnight were able to arrive during July (a total of approximately 4000 for the month). By dividing 4000 by the 14 flights to Darwin in July, we find that each flight for the month of July had an average of 286 passengers. What’s really interesting, is that smaller capacity planes were used for these flights (see chart Number of flights vs total capacity for destinations with no cap). The average total capacity for aircraft used to fly to Darwin is 240 passengers – well below the average 286 passengers they could have flown in. Therefore, most likely the flights into Darwin were totally full.

If you were one of these passengers, it would have been absolutely fanastic: it means the average cost of a ticket on one of these flights should have been very reasonable in comparison to commerical flights to destinations with arrival caps, as these have been able to carry far less passengers and at the same time only a fraction of each aircraft’s capacity (see chart Number of passengers on each flight).

To take advantage of repatriation flights to Darwin, you need to apply through the right government channels. Are you eligible for government assistance? Learn more from my post:

More from author

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Related posts

spot_img

Latest posts

What’s my chance of getting a flight to Australia?

The graph below tells us the story of what has happened to international flights* since pre-COVID times (2019) up to a few months ago...

What’s new

3 January, 2022 update If you've been waiting to travel to Australia since COVID hit, you may be wondering, "What is happening with the flights...

Has the flight to my stopover city been flying regularly?

Check that your flight to your stopover city has been regularly flying into Australia with one of the following tools.  You will need the...

Want to stay up to date with the latest news?

We would love to hear from you! Please fill in your details and we will stay in touch. It's that simple!