Have Australians Stopped Flying to the USA? Here’s What the Data Says…

There have been plenty of anecdotal reports of fewer people travelling to the United States in 2025, compared to previous years. But is this actually true for Australians?

To find out, we analysed the actual passenger traffic numbers between Australia and the USA in the first eight months of 2025.

It turns out that the number of people flying between Australia and the USA actually increased so far this year by 4%, compared to the same period in 2024. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, and there are some surprising trends emerging…

The BITRE publishes monthly statistics

To find out exactly what’s going on, we took a close look at publicly available data published by the Australian government’s Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics (BITRE).

The BITRE publishes monthly international airline activity reports with information including the number of seats offered and passengers flown between Australia and each other country, on a per-airline basis.

The most recent month for which data is currently available is August 2025. So, we compared the numbers for the period from January-August 2025 to the equivalent period last year, from January-August 2024. This ensures that normal seasonal fluctuations are taken into account.

As a “control”, we also compared the number of passengers who flew between Australia and Canada over the same periods.

Passenger numbers are up between Australia & USA

Between January and August 2025, a total of 1,639,861 people flew directly between Australia and the United States. This number accounts for traffic in both directions, so that’s equivalent to 819,930 round-trips. That’s 4% more passengers than the same period in 2024.

This chart compares the total monthly passengers between the two years:

For what it’s worth, it’s normal for the passenger numbers to be higher in the Australian summer months as this is the seasonal peak. What’s more interesting is this year’s monthly passenger numbers when compared to the same month in 2024.

Meanwhile, passenger numbers between Australia and Canada are down by 9% so far in 2025, compared to 2024.

What about capacity and load factors?

The above data shows us the total number of passengers flying between Australia and the USA or Canada. But it doesn’t account for capacity (the number of seats available in the market).

Overall, capacity between Australia and the USA is down 1% between January-August 2025, compared to the same months in 2024.

Over the same period, the number of seats available between Australia and Canada has dropped by 12%. This is because Air Canada reduced its Brisbane-Vancouver schedule to less than daily.

The average percentage of seats occupied (known as the “load factor”) between Australia and USA has increased by 5% in 2025 to 77%. Load factors on Australia-Canada flights have gone up 3% in 2025 to 89%.

In case you’re interested, our data also breaks down the monthly average load factors on Australia-USA routes, between January and August 2025, by airline:

For what it’s worth, Qantas flew around half of all passengers between Australia and the USA over the most recent Australian winter. But this will change in the Australian summer because the US airlines adjust their capacity seasonally.

Note that Jetstar and Hawaiian Airlines fly non-stop between Australia and Hawaii, but not the US mainland. So, the numbers for Jetstar and Hawaiian are indicative of traffic to/from Hawaii specifically.

Hawaii is losing its appeal

In August 2025, Hawaiian Airlines managed to fill just 51% of its seats between Sydney and Honolulu. While this was a particularly bad month, Hawaiian’s numbers since February 2025 haven’t been much better.

If we compare Hawaiian Airlines’ monthly Sydney-Honolulu passenger numbers for 2025 with its 2024 figures, it’s clear that demand to Hawaii is down.

Jetstar, meanwhile, has just stopped flying to Hawaii completely after 19 years. It already withdrew from its Melbourne-Honolulu route in May, handing over the flying to Qantas. Now, the budget carrier has exited the Sydney-Honolulu route as well.

Qantas has also just cancelled all its Melbourne-Honolulu flights for February and March 2026 – most likely because sales haven’t met expectations.

One possible explanation is that the weak Australian Dollar against the US Dollar, combined with expensive accommodation prices in Hawaii, has made a Hawaiian holiday much less affordable for Aussies.

Net migration from Australia to the USA appears to have plummeted

If we dig a bit deeper into the data, an even more surprising trend emerges.

Between January and August 2024, 778,802 people flew from the USA to Australia. Over the same period, 792,839 people flew in the other direction from Australia to the USA. This effectively means that 14,037 people left Australia for the USA during that period but didn’t return, which could indicate that they permanently migrated from Australia to the United States.

So, how does that compare to the period from January-August 2025? Well, over these eight months, 819,085 people arrived in Australia from the US and 820,776 people flew the other way. That would indicate that only 1,691 people departed Australia for the USA but didn’t return.

In other words, on average, around 51 fewer people are migrating each day from Australia to the USA this year than last year. That would indicate an 88% decrease in net migration from Australia to the United States in 2025.

The trend with net migration from Australia to Canada is the opposite. From January to August 2024, 3,345 more people departed Australia for Canada than arrived in Australia from Canada. But from January-August 2025, 4,111 more people flew from Australia to Canada than the other way. That’s a 23% increase in net migration from Australia to Canada.

These statistics may not tell the whole story

While this real-world data is a lot more useful than pure speculation, it still only tells part of the story.

The role of ticket prices

For starters, the raw passenger numbers don’t account for yields or ticket prices. An airline could fill every seat on every flight by heavily discounting – but that doesn’t mean it would make money.

One reason for the increase in passenger numbers could be that the airfares between Australia and the USA are cheaper this year. Conversely, fewer people might be flying to Canada because airfares there have gone up.

Certainly, we have seen airlines lowering airfares and offering more promotions (such as double frequent flyer points) on flights between Australia and the USA this year. Airfares between Australia and Canada haven’t dropped as much.

For example, consider the recent Air New Zealand sale on flights from Australia to North America. (Air New Zealand isn’t part of our data set, but it does carry a lot of sixth-freedom traffic from Australia to North America via Auckland.)

These were Air New Zealand’s sale airfare prices from Sydney to Los Angeles and San Francisco:

Sydney-Vancouver covers a comparable distance, but Air New Zealand priced it higher:

The BITRE data doesn’t distinguish between nationalities

It’s interesting that overall Australia-USA traffic is up 4% year-on-year despite significantly fewer people flying between Australia and Hawaii.

Hawaii’s poor performance could also hint at the direction of the Australia-USA traffic in 2025. The Australia-Hawaii flights tend to have a lot more Australians on board than Americans, but that’s not necessarily the case on the flights to/from the US mainland.

Perhaps the higher overall passenger numbers between Australia and the US are because more Americans are coming to Australia. Indeed, while the weak Australian dollar is a turn-off for Australians, the current exchange rate would make an Australian vacation more affordable for Americans.

We can’t tell whether or not this is the case from the BITRE data alone, as it doesn’t break down the nationalities of passengers.

There’s a time lag with the data

At this stage, we only have data up to August 2025. It’s possible that traffic could have dropped in the past few months. It’s also possible that airlines might have seen a dip in forward bookings, especially with the US government shutdown. But even if that was the case, the statistics wouldn’t yet reflect this.

In the most recent month that we have data for, Australia-USA passengers were down 1% year-on-year. But during that same month, Australia-Canada traffic was down 15%. So, while this could be the start of a broader trend, it could also be totally insignificant. We won’t know until BITRE releases its data for the following months.