For the last three months running, Melbourne has had the lowest average number of passengers on each flight (see chart below). In August, it reached an all time low of 9.
Does that mean some flights literally could have had 9 passengers?
Flights to Melbourne with passengers probably had more than 9 passengers, but other flights were cargo-only with zero passengers (thus creating an average of 9 passengers). How do we know?
“If you’re doing a flight every day, you [an airline] might be allocated 25 passengers for five of those flights and then you might get allocated zero passengers for two flights,” Mr Abrams said (Sydney Morning Herald). Therefore, it’s easy to assume that on the chart above, some of the flights were given a zero-passenger allocation by the government, meaning that the flights became cargo-only and all passengers were bumped off the flights. However, none of the flights included on the chart above were cancelled – these are all historical flights.
Easy to fly to Melbourne?
Having an average of 9 passengers per plane on each flight to Melbourne tells us that it was the most challenging city in Australia to fly into during August without getting bumped off your flight (either because your flight became cargo-only or you were not including in the number of passengers allocated to the flight).
Cost of a ticket to Melbourne
Airlines probably all trying, as a minimum, to recover the direct running cost of each flight (for more details about the running costs of a flight, see section Cost of Ticket to Perth in this post)*. Therefore, if you fly to Melbourne, you are probably going to be pay more on average for your ticket as there are fewer passengers on each flight to share the cost with.
Can I get an economy ticket to Melbourne?
It is impossible (at this time – based on August’s historical flight data) for you to fly with an economy ticket to Melbourne. See the chart below.
Firstly, check that the right filters are activated on the chart (look at the filters on the right-hand side and make sure only the latest month is checked for Month, Year of Date and that only Melbourne is checked for Destination City).
You will see that all bars in the negative. This is means that probably no flight to Melbourne in August had even it’s first/business class seats filled. Therefore, most likely, no flights were able to fill even one economy class seat. (If the bars were in the positive, this would mean the number of economy seats left after first/business class seats were filled).
Recommendations
Can you afford the the higher cost of first/business class seats? You could attempt to fly to Melbourne. However, be prepared for fact that closer to the date of the flight (when government allocations are given to airlines), you may be bumped off your flight. For the highest chance of flying into an Australian city anytime soon, Sydney is probably your best bet as the sheer bulk of flights into Australia are to Sydney. (To learn more, see my post Should I try flying to Sydney?)
If you are really tight on cash, are able to book well in advance and are able to fly to another city, then I would recommend flying to Adelaide. In theory, flying to Adelaide should allow the cheapest tickets as the cost is shared with the highest number of passengers per flight. However, we must remember that even if you flew economy to Adelaide, the price of an economy ticket would still be much higher than pre-COVID (to learn more about economy tickets to Australia, see this post). However, once again, there is still a good chance that when seat allocations come through for the flight, you may still be bumped off a flight (especially for flights in the distant future, airlines usually sell more tickets than will actually fly because they do not know what the passenger arrival caps will be by the time of the flight). (To learn more, see my post Should I try flying to Adelaide?)
Are you classed as ‘vulnerable’ by the Australian government? If so, you could take advantage of government-arranged repatriation (DFAT) flights. To learn more, see my post:
* We must also acknowledge that some airlines are probably running at a loss and also are bearing some of the running costs.