The short answer: Adelaide
Why Adelaide?
Adelaide is by far the best city to fly into if you can only buy an economy ticket (or the cheapest ticket possible). Each plane flying into Adelaide has a far greater number of passengers on each flight, which also means more economy seats are flying (after the first class and business class seats are filled). It should also translate into cheaper tickets as there are more passengers to spread the cost of each flight.
The chart below shows the average number of passengers on each flight for each capital city.
As you can see, Adelaide has dramatically more seats being filled on each flight than the other capital cities. However, this is dropping fast and we do not know for how long flights to Adelaide will continue to fill all their business/first class seats*. (This chart also shows that in August, on average, flights to Adelaide filled 14% of the total capacity of the plane, but this works out to be 110% of the number of first/business class seats.)
However, to give yourself the best chance of not being bumped off your flight closer to the date of departure, it is best to book a first/business class ticket.
For more about how many economy seats have been available on flights to Adelaide…
* This is an average. It cannot be said that definitely every flight filled all its business/first class seats – some flights may have had many more passengers and others, fewer.
